The Later Roman Empire Vol II A.H.M. Jones

THE LATER
ROMAN EMPIRE
284-602
A SOCIAL ECONOMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE
SURVEY
By A. H. M. JONES
PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
VOLUME ll
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OXFORD
1964
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
/. VOLUME II
(xv ).>ENATORS AND HONORATI-the aristocratic ideal, 52;-4;
'Z__ ordo equester, comitiva and senate, 525-;o; admission and prece-
dence, 5;0-5; privileges and burdens, 5;5-42; the value of rank,
54;-5; the social composition of the senate, 545-52; the geo-
graphical distribution of senators, 55 2-4; the wealth of senators,
5 54-7; otium senatoris, 5 57-62.
XVI. THE CIVIL SERVICE-the origins of the service, 5 6;-6; the
sacred bedchamber, 566-72; the palatine ministries, 572-86; the
praetorian prefecture, 5 86-91; vicariani and cohortales, 5 92-6;
military and minor offices, 597-6or; the character of the service,
6or-6.
XVII. THE ARMY-the army of the fourth century, 607-rr;joederati,
6r r-r3; thescho!ae, 6r 3-14; recruitment of citizens, 614-19; recruit-
ment of barbarians, 619-23; pay and equipment, 623-6; rations,
626-3o; conditions of service, 630-3; promotion and discharge,
633-6;protectores, 636-4o; officers, 64o-6; morale and discipline,
646-9; the Jimitanei, 649-54; the army of the sixth century, 6 5 4-7;
categories of troops, 657-68; recruitment and conditions of
service, 668-79; numbers, 679-86.
XVIII. ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE-the two capitals, 687-9;
administration, 689-92; police and fire, 692-5; food supply,
695-705; ameuities, 705-8; public works and finance, 708-n.
XIX. THE CITIES-number and size, 712-r 8; new foundations and old
cities, 718-22; the people, 722-4; the council and magistrates,
724-31; civic finance, 732-4; civic services, 734-7; the curiales,
737-57; the decline of the councils, 757-63; provincial assem-
(1 blies, 763-6.
\29Y THE LAND-land use, 767-9; the importance of agriculture,
769-7;; the peasant freeholder, 773-81; estates, 781-8; estate
management, 788-92; hited labour and slaves, 792-5; co!oni,
795-803; rents and services, 803-8; the condition of the peasantry,
1
- 8o8-u; agri deserti, 812-23.
{ X X ~ INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT-conditions of
\ ./ trade, 824-7; the navicularii, 827-;o; the cursus publicus, 8;o-4;
factories, quarries and mines, 8 34-9; the role of the state, 8 ;9-41 ;
private transport, 841-4; objects of trade, 844-50; the slave trade,
V
vi CONTENTS
85 r-5; the pattern of trade, 85 5-8; labourers and craftsmen,
85 8-64; merchants, 864-72.
XXII. THE CHURCH-ancient custom, 873-4; bishoprics, 874-9;
provinces, 88o-3; patriarcbates, 883-94; church finances, 894-
904; the wealth of the church, 904-ro; the lower clergy, 910-14;
episcopal elections, 915-20; the social origins of the clergy,
92o-9; monks and hermits, 929-33; church and state, 933-7.
XXIII. RELIGION AND MORALS-pagans, 938-43; Jews and
Samaritans, 944-50; heretics, 950-6; the growth of superstition,
957-64; doctrinal controversies, 964-70; and Christian
morals, 97o-9; the church's failure, 979-85.
XXIV. EDUCATION AND CULTURE-Latin and Greek, 986-9r;
native languages, 991-7; schools and teachers, 997-roo2; the
syllabus, roo2-4; Christianity and education, 1005-7; literary
culture, roo7-r2; doctors, architects and artists, ror2-r6; public
r entertainments, ror6-2I; the unity of the empire, !021-4.
THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE-East and West, 1025-7;
\._/ the barbarians, 1027-3 r; political weaknesses, rop-5; military
defects, 103 5-8; economic decline, 1038-4o; depopulation,
1040-5; idle mouths, 1045-8; social weaknesses, 1049-53;
administrative abuses, 105 3-8; decline of morale, 105 8-64; East
and West, ro64-68.
CHAPTER XV
SENATORS AND HONORATI
I
DEALLY the senatorial order comprised 'the better part of the
human race', or, as a Gallic orator more emphatically put it,
'the Bower of the whole world'. The traditional criteria of
excellence were noble birth, distinction in the public service, moral
character, intellectual culture, and sufficient wealth. Symmachus'
speeches and letters on behalf of candidates for the Roman senate
well illustrate the conventional view. All the traditional qualifica-
tions could hardly be demanded from every aspirant to the order,
and Symmachus naturally stresses the strong points of his clients.
But it was evidently felt that candidates should satisfy as many as
possible of the standard tests, and Symmachus feels constrained
to make as good a case as he can on the weaker aspects of his
clients' claims, even if this involves some evasiveness and special
pleading.
1
Birth came very high on the list. In one case it is almost the only
plea. Valerius Fortunatus was a young man who had held no
public office and was apparently in no way distinguished. He came
of an impoverished senatorial family, so impoverished that his
mother had renounced his rank on his behalf when he was a boy.
Symmachus can stress only his birth, and, as evidence of character,
'the impulse of noble blood, which always asserts itself', whereby he
had despite his poverty (which was only relative, since he was
prepared to face the expenses of quaestorian games) resolved to
reclaim his hereditary rank.
2
Even more significant of the importance attached to birth are the
evasive tactics adopted by Symmachus when recommending a
low-born candidate. He thus introduces Flavius Severus. 'But
of what avail is it to boast of any man's fanilly before the noblest of
the human race? Every light is overpowered by the sun's rays.
Still you should remember that this is due not to diffidence but to
reverence. A new colleague lays down the ornaments of his
ancestors before the doors of the senate house, and enters attended
only by his virtues, which by themselves can indicate that breec!ing
B
524 SENATORS AND HONORATI
which I have foreborn to praise.' In Flavius Severus' case Sym-
machus dwells mainly on his distinguished public career: he had
governed a province and served as assessor to Theodosius
the magister mi!itum. But to round off his case he calls Severus
'a master of eloquence'-he was a barrister by profession-and
among his moral excellencies stresses his remarkable modesty in
having waited so long before aspiring to senatorial rank. a
In the case of Celsus, an Athenian philosopher who had opened
a school at Rome, the main emphasis is naturally on his intellectual
attainments. But Symmachus feels that it strengthens his case to
recall that Celsus' father was also a distinguished philosopher. He
also urges 'that we reward with the prize of rank a soul free from
the vice of avarice' -Celsus, he explains, charged no fees. He is
thus able to sum up his client's claims as 'birth, learning and
character'.
4
Synesius was the son of a senator, but his father J ulianus was a
new man. Symmachus pays the tribute to merit which was
conventional in such cases. 'This young man's father has long been
admitted to the senate, which was due to merit: hereditary rank
is the gift of fortune, acquired rank that of virtue.' He. is evidently
not anxious to enlarge on Julian's family, and the fact that he was a
senator already enables him to dodge the issue neatly: 'His other
more remote ancestors were approved by you on the occasion when
he was himself elected.' Synesius' case, he urges, is stronger.
'One might rightly say that Synesius brings :n.ore to the
House than his father did, because he has the addltlonal clatm that he
is the second person to be admitted from the same family: for a
family tree rises higher to nobility the further it grows from new
men.' Of young Synesius himself there was little to say. Sym-
machus chieflv emphasises the fact that being (owing to his
brother's recent decease) an only son, he will inherit a fortune
adequate for a senator, and that his frugal habits will conserve his
wealth. 'Nature has given Synesius a good character,' he sums up,
'his father an excellent education, fortune adequate wealth.'
5
The form of these speeches was no doubt dictated by the con-
ventional pattern of the panegyric, as laid down in the rhetorical
textbooks. But this conventional pattern corresponded broadly
with the scale of values prevalent in Roman society. Moral rectitude
was perhaps, a.s in all ag.es, more highly honoured in theo_ry in
practice, but btrth, pubhc office, wealth and culture were m varymg
combinations the normal qualification for admission to the imperial
aristocracy.
ORDO EQUESTER, COMITIVA AND SENATE 525
The senatorial order always remained the highest class in the
state in dignity, but its numbers, composition and recruitment
varied greatly in the. th!ee cer:t.uries which followed
reign and so also did tts pohttcal power. Under Dtoclet1an the
was still a select body, probably numbering only about six
hundred members. New members were regularly adlected to it by
the emperors, but it was a predominantly hereditary body, strongly
aristocratic in tone and comprising families which claimed very
long pedigrees, sometimes reaching back to the Republic. Most
senators were rich men and many senatorial families had accumu-
lated vast fortunes. Though recruited from all parts of the empire,
they gravitated to Rome and the majority were probably Italian by
domicile. They owned land in every province, but the bulk of thetr
estates was concentrated in Italy and the adjacent Western pro-
vinces.
In the second century senators had played an active part in
the administration of the empire and the command of the armies,
but in the middle of the third they were excluded, especially
from military posts. Diocletian in his reorganisation of the empire
carried this process further and by the end of h!s
were eligible for very few posts, and these exclusiVely ctvilian and
of minor importance. The senate retained great social prestige, but
politically !t counted for little. Diocletian could bestow no higher
honour oil his praetorian prefects than the ordinary consulship,
which made them senators. But a senator by birth could only hope
to hold some minor office, such as curator of the aqueducts, at
Rome; be corrector of an Italian province, or Sicily or Achaea;
serve as proconsul of Africa or Asia, and finally rise to be prefect
of the city.
6
The minor military commands and many administrative, and
especially financial, posts had from the beginning of the Principate
been entrusted to men of equestrian rank. [The equestrian service
had steadily expanded, and its members hai::l come to constitute a
second aristocracy, inferior in dignity to the senate, but of greater
practical importancGJ rMembership of the equestrian order was not
hereditary, but depedi\ed on office, bestowed by the emperor7and
the grades of the order-the egregii or sexagenarii, the centen'tirli and
the ducenarii, who earned salaries of 6o,ooo, xoo,ooo and 2oo,ooo
sesterces, the who earned. 3oo,ooo, the emtitentissi"!i,
the praetorian determmed by office. Dto-
cletian's reorgamsatton of the emptre not only enhanced the
importance of the equestrian order at the expense of the senate,
but greatly increased its numbers, particularly in the higher grades.
Not only were there twice as many provincial governors, now
almost all perfectissimi, but at diocesan level there were vicars,
rationa!es and magistri, who held the same rank, as well as the new
military commanders, the duces. An increasing number of the
higher posts in the civil service were also upgraded to equestrian
rank. The order comprised not only actual officers : past holders of
offices retained their rank and privileges for life. Honorary rank
was also conferred apart from office, or in the form of a fictive past
tenure of an office.7
Constantine created in the imperial 'companions' or comites a
third order of nobility which overlapped the other two. For the
comitiva was bestowed on senators and men of equestrian rank as
well as on those who were members of neither order. The comitiva
might be an office or an honour. It might carry specific duties;
there were comites intra consistorium who served on the imperial
council, comites provinciarum who supervised the civil administration
of dioceses, and comites rei mi!itaris who commanded groups of the
field army. But the comitiva might also be conferred as an additional
honour on the holder of an existing office; it was .regularly so
conferred on the principal ministers of the comitatus. A comes held
his office during the emperor's pleasure, but retained a privileged
status for life. The order of comites was, like the equestrian,
swelled by honorary grants of the rank of former comes (ex
comitibus). s
. Both the. equestrian order and the comitiva became grossly
mflated durmg the first half of the fourth century. The main
cause of the increase was, it would seem, the lavish grant of
honorary rank to decurions who wished thereby to evade their
curial duties; many laws prohibit such grants, but they were
nevertheless frequently obtained by corrupt means. At the same
time equestrian. rank to be given as a reward for good service
t<;> P.ersons of mcreasmgly lowly In 362 numerarii of pro-
vmctal governors were accorded the highest equestrian grade, the
perfectissimate, .after five years' blameless service, and in 365
actuarii of regiments were similarly rewarded. The natural result
was that the prestige of the equestrian order sank. The lowest
grade, the egregiatus, is last recorded in 324; the overcrowded
perfectissimate had to be divided into three classes. 9
While, to by the series of la"':s denouncing illicit grants of
honorary rank, lt was the equestrtan order and the comitiva
which expanded most rapidly down to the third quarter of the
fourth century, the senate also began to grow during this period.
It was Constantine who began the process. Not only was he more
ORDO EQUESTER, COMITIVA AND SENATE 527
lavish in grants of senatorial rank but he employed senators more
freely in the administration of the empire. He and his sons ap-
pointed senators to posts hitherto reserved for members of the
equestrian order; we find senators serving as praesides of provinces,
as vicars and as praetorian prefects. They also increased the number
of posts reserved for senators, in particular by converting the
governors of many provinces from praesides (normally an equestrian
post carrying the rank of perfectissimus) to consulares (who must be
clarissimi). These changes had the effect of bringing more senators
into the imperial service; but they also provided the means of
creating more senators, for an outsider appointed a consu!aris
thereby became a senator, and it became normal to confer senatorial
rank on all holders of such offices as the vicariate, which senators
customarily held. The military offices, to which senators did not
aspire or from which they were excluded, lagged behind. Under
Constantius II duces were still all perfectissimi, and it was not until
the reign of V alentinian and V alens that they began to be granted
the clarissimate on promotion.lO
By the end of the fourth century the senatorial order had under-
gone a vast expansion, more particularly in the East, where
Constantius II founded a second senate of Constantinople to rival
that of Rome, then under his younger brother's rule. The Con-
stantinopolitan senate began as a small and select body: in 3 57
according to Themistius it numbered scarcely 300 members.
Within thirty years it had swelled to 2,ooo. This prodigious rate of
increase was partly the result of emulation; the senate of the New
Rome had to catch up with that of old Rome. But it implies that at
Rome too numbers must have risen, no doubt more gradually,
to a comparable figure. The increase was due to a number of
causes. As more and more offices came to carry senatorial rank, the
appointment of outsiders to these posts steadily created more
senators, and as the normal tenure of offices was short, the annual
intake of new members by the order was large. An increasing
number of the higher palatine officials were accorded senatorial
rank either during service or on retirement. But the main increase
came from honorary grants. As senatorial rank became cheapened
it was bestowed more liberally; under Valens decurions could
lawfully achieve it by holding the high-priesthood of their pro-
vince. Other wealthy men naturally aspired to the same rank, and
many of them by influence or corruption obtained it. The influx of
decurions into the senate became from the last years of Constantius
II a serious problem.u
The expansion of the senate completed the degradation of the
other honorati. The equestrian order faded into insignificance.
G) SENATORS AND HONORATI
'Even the lowest grade of provincial governor, the praesides, had
by the early years of the fifth century, if not before, become
clarissimi, and the tribunes of regiments attained the same rank.
The equestrian grades of honour were preserved only. for senior
civil servants in some palatine ministries. In these circumstances the
pressure of applicants for honorary equestrian rank was relaxed;
after 3 58 there are no more laws denouncing decurions who have
secured the perfectissimate by corrupt means. The comitiva also
lost most of its importance. The rank of comes primi ordinis still
had some value. Bestowed on the holders of various offices, it
enhanced their precedence within the senatorial order and, if
granted to outsiders, it carried with it senatorial rank. The third
class of the comitiva was still conferred, but on persons of very
humble degree, decurions who had completed their obligations to
their cities, and the patrons of the guilds of bakers and butchers at
Rome. From the beginning of the fifth century, if not earlier, the
was the sole .aristoq:acy. of the .. empire.
12

As senatorial rank was more widely diffused it was inevitably
cheapened and the once proud title of clarissimus ceased to carry
much distinction. Grades were formed within the order, and the
higher grades acquired new and grander titles. The new senatorial
..hierarchy, whose basic structure was laid down by Valentinian I,
r was in the main determined by the tenure, actual or honorary, of
Umperial offices. There were some exceptions to this principle.
The ordinary consulate was still the highest honour that could be
conferred on a subject, and former consuls took precedence of all
other senators. They were followed by patricians, an ancient title
revived by Constantine, no longer as a hereditary but as a personal
distinction. At the bottom end of the scale there were still senators
(by birth, who ranked as clarissimi although they held no imperial
loffice, and newcomers to the order could still be admitted by codi-
cils of the clarissimate. rank was
The highest class of senators, :;rt:er-consuTs .. and patricians, was
formed by those who had held the praetorian or urban prefecture or
the mastership of the soldiers; to this group were later (in 422)
added former praepositi sacri cubiculi. Next came the principal
palatine ministers-quaestors, masters of the offices, comites
of the largitiones and res privata and of the domestici. All these were
accorded, at first by courtesy, before the end of the fourth century
officially, the title of illustris. Next followed two groups which
acquired the title of spectabilis. They consisted of proconsuls and
of vicars, with whom were equated the military officers of the
second grade, the comites rei militaris and duces, various lesser
palatine ministers, such as the magistri scrini()f'um, and the second
ORDO EQUESTER, COMITIVA AND SENATE
and third eunuchs of the bedchamber, the primicerius and the
castrensis. The rest, including consulars of provinces, and later
praesides and tribunes of regiments, remained mere clarissimi.
14
.
one of birthTnto of the senatortal
oraer was,-it1Sfffie: still hereditary: a senator's son was a senator by
cftttigimtJ.s ,. even ,. .
)llustrts ,_'The hrglier grades of the order could only be achieved by
tenure of the appropriate offices, or by imperial grant of equivalent
status.
15
During the first lialf of the fifth century the distinction between
the three grades became more marked. Illustres were accorded
liiglier privileges, fiscal and jurisdictional: those of spectabiles and
clarissimi were whittled away. Effective membersliip of the senate
was more and more confined to illustres. The lower grades were
allowed, encouraged, and indeed, if of curial descent, compelled to
reside in tlieir home towns in tlie provinces. Marcian by excusing
provincial spectabiles and clarissimi from the praetorship cut tlieir
last effective link with the senate. The illustres thus came to form an
inner aristocracy, and by Justinian's reign not only active member-
ship of the senate, but the title of senator, was reserved to tliem.
The exact date of the cliange is uncertain. It must have taken
place after 4.5 o, up to which year spectabiles and clarissimi were
still liable to tlie praetorship, and before 5 30, when the Digest was
published. It is unlikely to have been made under Justin or
Justinian, or Procopius would have denounced it in the Secret
History. It appears moreover from Cassiodorus' Variae that tlie
same change had taken place in tlie Ostrogothic kingdom, and that
at Rome also only illustres were members of tlie senate. The new
rule might have been introduced into the West by Theoderic or
perliaps by Anthemius and would tlierefore date from Zeno's
reign at latest, and perhaps from that of Leo.
16
The senate had thus by the sixth century become a relatively
small and select body once more, but unlike the senate of the early
fourth century it was no louger in law a hereditary body: member-
sliip depended on imperial nomination to an illustrious office, active
or honorary. Spectabilis and clarissimus became mere titles of
honour, carrying ratlier restricted privileges: the clarissimate was
still hereditary, the sons of all three classes being entitled to it.
The legal change seems to have had little practical effect. Illustrious
fathers naturally petitioned tlie emperor to give the same rank to
their sons, and the emperor was gracious to youths of illustrious
parentage. We have a striking example of tlie hereditary trans-
mission of illustrious rank in the story of a family recounted in one
,I
I
of Justinian's Novels. When Hierius, vir gloriosus (that is, il!ustris
of the upper grade), made his will, his eldest son Constantine was
only vir clarissimus. When later he added a codicil, Cons tan tine
was vir gloriosus and had a son, a little boy named Hierius, who was
only vir clarissimus. The second Hierius died a vir gloriosus, and so
did his son Constantine: so also did another son of the first Hierius,
Alexander. The senate of Justinian continued in practice to be a
mixed body, formed partly of hereditary members, partly of new
men promoted by the emperorP
Admission to the equestrian order was effected by imperial
codicil or letter, which might take one of three forms. It might
grant an office, such as that of praeses or rationalis, which carried
equestrian rank: or it might confer fictive past tenure of such an
office, entitling the recipient to call himself ex praesidibus or ex
rationalibus: or thirdly it might bestow the bare title of an equestrian
grade, perfectissimus, ducenarius, centenarius or egregius. Admission
to the comitiva was similarly effected by codicil or letter, which
either conferred the actual post of comes of the first, second or third
class, or gave the recipient the status ex comitibus. The rank thus
conferred, with its attendant privileges, was for life, and was not
legally hereditary,. though fathers of equestrian status naturally
endeavoured to secure like status for their sons, and the emperors
tended to be indulgent to such claims.lS
Admission to the senate was a more complicated matter, for the
senate was an ancient corporation, and jealously preserved its
traditions. A senator's son-or after 364 a son born to a man
already a senator-had a right to seek admission. He was clarissimus
from birth, and was registered forthwith in the records of the urban
prefecture. Symmachus, making the annual return of senators to
the emperor, speaks of the list as including 'those whom recent
birth has added to your senate'. But this is only a manner of
speaking. Young c/arissimi were not members of the House from
birth, but were formally enrolled, according to the ancient rule of
the Principate, by election to the quaestorship. A senator's son
was apparently obliged to take up his rank unless he-or his
parents-obtained imperial permission to renounce it. Valerius
Fortunatus' widowed mother, fearing the expenses of the quaestor-
ship, petitioned the emperor on his behalf for leave to renounce
his hereditary rank. Later Fortunatus, claimed as a decurion by
his native city of Emerita, thought better of it, petitioned for the
restoration of his birthright, and offered himself for the quaestor-
ship.19
ADMISSION AND PRECEDENCE
53 I
The procedure for the admission of an outsider is briefly outlined
by Libanius in his speech (or rather pamphlet) on behalf of his
friend Thalassius, who had sought a seat in the senate of Con-
stantinople. 'Thalassius', he writes, 'followed the law on the
matter; in accordance with which he obtained a document from
your hand (that is the emperor, whom Libanius is ostensibly
addressing), and sent it to the senate, to receive what was required
of it.' Allusions in the Theodosian Code and Symmachus' letters
and speeches enable us to amplify this rather cryptic statement.
The first step was to obtain from the emperor codicilli clarissimatus.
The candidate then lodged (allegare is the technical term) this
document with the prefect of the city, as president of the senate.
He next had to find a number of senators to swear, as iuratores,
to his suitability, and others to speak on his behalf. Finally a vote
was taken.
20
The affidavits and speeches (of which a few, delivered by
Symmachus, are partially preserved) and the election were doubtless
in most cases a formality.Uf the candidate was known to have the
backi,ng of the emperor or of a great man the senate had to accept
hini.l But the election was not always a foregone conclusion.
Symmachus' great friends at court, Longinianus, comes sacrarum
largitionum, and Hilarius, praetorian prefect of Italy, thought it
worth while to write and request his support for their proteges.
Symmachus replied to the former that owing to illness he was
unable to do anything himself, but that his friends were successful
in putting the matter through, as the minutes of the senate (which
he encloses) will make plain. He assures the latter that his client's
election will go through swimmingly. We know of one candidate
who was rejected. Libanius' friend Thalassius was blackballed as a
vulgar manufacturer by the senate of Constantinople-a body
whose members were not, as Libanius was not slow to point out,
blue-blooded aristocrats themselves. 2
1
A candidature for the senate might thus be based on an imperial
codicil which simply conferred the clarissimate. It might also be
based on the grant of a dignitas, such as the office of consularis or
proconsul, which was reserved for senators. A law of 3 83 lays
down that a man appointed consularis may not take up his post
until he has acknowledged the senatorial rank he has thus acquired,
and made the requisite declarations of his domicile and property.
It furthermore became customary to associate a codicil of the
clarissimate with other offices which were not by constitutional rule
senatorial. The vicariate was, it would appear from a law of 3 59,
already a normal title to senatorial rank. The office of dux became
so later: Ammianus tells us that under Constantius II 'no dux
I
I
11
was promoted with the clarissimate', implying that when he was
writing they normally were. Not only actual but honorary or titular
offices gave a claim to a seat in the senate. Such titular offices were
regularly given to those senior palatine civil servants who received
senatorial rank, the object being to give them higher precedence in
the order. They were naturally also sought after by other aspirants
to the senate, and for the same reason.22
When membership of the senate was limited to illustres applica-
tions for membership must have been based on codicils of illust-
rious office, actual or honorary. Even at this date it seems that
formal election by the senate was required before the holder of a
codicil became a senator. Among Cassiodorus' Variae are for-
mulae not only for the grant of titular illustrious offices, but for a
letter to the senate, introducing a candidate and requesting his
admission to the House; and in announcing to the senate the
appointment of an illustrious officer the Gothic kings sometimes
add a request that the House receive him into their number.2a
Precedence within the senate had under the Principate been
regulated by the tenure of the ancient Republican magistracies,
which were held in a fixed order and at fixed intervals. These
magistracies had for centuries been empty forms when Diocletian
came to the throne, but some at any rate survived to Justinian's
day. Since they were so unimportant, they have left little trace in
the laws, except in so far as they were connected with the production
of games, and it is only from casual references that their survival
can be traced. The quaestorship is regularly recorded at Rome
down to the early fifth century: there is no mention of it at Con-
stantinople, perhaps because there it did not as at Rome involve
games. The curule and plebeian aediles are recorded only in a
poem of Ausonius on the festivals of Rome. The tribunate of the
plebs is also only mentioned once, in 371, and curiously enough at
Constantinople. This is a warning against too lightly assuming
that lack of evidence is proof of the disappearance of an ancient
magistracy. The praetorship, because of the praetotian games, is
frequently mentioned at both Rome and Constantinople; in both
capitals it survived into the sixth century, as Boethius and John
Lydus testify. The suffect consulship is last mentioned in the laws
in Constantine' s time, when it still had games attached to it. But
Symmachus happens to mention that in 401 a suffect consul was
thrown from his chariot in a procession. 24
Only one ancient Republican office retained its glamour un-
tarnished, the ordinary consulate, whose holders entered upon
office on the Kalends of January and gave their names to the year.
Thus to achieve immortality was the highest ambition of the
ADMISSION AND PRECEDENCE
533
noblest aristocrats and of ambitious parvenus, and as there
were only two consuls each year and the emperors and members of
their families often assumed the office, it was few who achieved it.
The honour was accorded to the more distinguished praetorian
prefects and magistri mi!itum-whence the fasti were adorned with
uncouth names such as Dagalaifus or Areobindus-and occasionally
to magistri ojficiorum who attained exceptional influence-Rufinus,
Helion and Nomus. It was sometimes, but rarely, granted to
imperial favourites who held no office, such as Datianus, once only
to a chief eunuch, Eutropius. Quite commonly it was given to
the great aristocrats who regarded it as their birthright, in the West
to members of the ancient noble families, in the East to the new
nobility which grew up in the fourth century.
At periods when the empire was divided one consul was nor-
mally nominated by the Augustus who held Rome, and the other by
the Eastern emperor: the latter entered upon office .at Constan-
tinople. But the names of both were used for dating documents
throughout the empire, except in periods of friction or civil war
when one emperor refused to acknowledge his colleague's (or a
usurper's) nominee. When in 476 there finally ceased to be an
emperor in the West Odoacer and Theoderic continued to nom-
inate consuls, who were generally received in the East. But after
the reconquest of Italy Justinian ceased to nominate Western
consuls, and the last consul to hold office in Rome was Paulinus,
whom Queen Amalasuntha appointed in 5 34 The office did not
long survive in Constantinople. Not enough men of sufficient
wealth and public spirit could be found to pay for the expensive
games which tradition demanded from an ordinary consul. Beli-
sarius held the office in 53 5 and after a two years' gap John the
Cappadocian in 53 8, foll<?wed b_Y. Flavius A pion .in 5 39, ~ ~ a v h s
Justinus in 540 and Flavms Amcms Faustus Albmus Basilms m
541. He proved to be the last subject to hold the consulate.
Thereafter it was assumed only by emperors on the Kalends of
January next after their accession.
25
The ordinary consulate was in the fifth century cheapened by the
grant of honorary consulates. These by a law of Zeno could be
obtained by the payment of a mere centenarium of gold to the
aqueduct fund of Constantinople-a payment which ordinary
consuls had since 4 5 2 had to make in addition to their games.
Though honorary consu!ares apparently ranked below former
ordinary consuls, the innovation was an unwise vulgarisation of
the supreme magistracy, and probably hastened its decline.
26
The other ancient magistracies had not only lost all importance.
They had by the fourth century ceased even to be useful as marks of
fi
534
seniority. A law of Constantine shows that not only quaestors but
praetors and even suffect consuls might be nominated under the age
of sixteen, and the natural result from this followed, that most if
not all adult senators were consulares, once the mo.st senior class.
The new order of precedence worked out by Valentinian I was, as
we have seen, mainly based on imperial offices. It was immensely
complicated and became progressively more so. 2
7
The uppermost bracket of ordinary consuls and patricians was
small, for consuls-at least until the creation of the honorary
consulate-were few and the patriciate was during the fourth and
early fifth centuries very sparingly bestowed; even under Zeno the
recipients had to be former consuls or urban or praetorian prefects.
But competition for precedence was no doubt all the keener. In
principle ex-consuls ranked highest according to the date of their
office. But a consul who was also an ex-prefect or magister militum
or a patrician had precedence over a consul of earlier date who had
not these additional claims. A difficult point arose when a senior ex-
consul who ranked below a junior ex-consul and patrician received
the patriciate: it was decided that the question should be decided
by the seniority of the consulates. And what if a man became
consul twice, as did very rarely happen? Here the rule differed in
East and West. According to a law of Theodosius II, a second
consulate merely re-affirmed and did not enhance the dignity of the
recipient, but a novel ofValentinian III, issued significantly in 443,
the second consulate of Petronius Maxim us, declared that a double
consulate gave its holder precedence over all other consuls.
28
Lower down the scale a disturbing factor was the comitiva primi
ordinis, which might be granted by itself, or might be bestowed on
the holder of another office. A law of 413 dealt comprehensively
with this tangled problem. A few examples will suffice to indicate
the intricacies of this law. Provincial governors, archiatri sacri
palatii, and assessors of illustrious magistrates, if they received the
comitiva primi ordinis, ranked with vicars, but architects rewarded
with the comitiva for their public services were equated only with
consulares. Vicars of the magistri militum and comites rei militaris
(except those of Egypt and Pontica) ranked as the duces. Tribunes
of the scholae, who normally ranked on retirement with former
duces, if they had concurrently held the comitiva were equated with
former comites of Egypt or Pontus.
2
9
An even more intractable problem was presented by honorary
officeS". It was a basic principle that within any group of offices of
equal rank individual precedence was determined by seniority of
appointment, but that all past holders of actual offices ranked above
all those who held honorary codicils. Thus in the highest group a
PRIVILEGES AND BURDENS
magister militum appointed in, say, 385, ranked below a praetorian
prefect appointed in 3 8 3, but above an honorary urban prefect
who had received his codicil in 3 So. Disputes arose when holders
of actual offices in a lower grade obtained honorary codicils in a
higher. A law of 383, which grapples with this problem, cites cases
of vicars who had obtained honorary codicils of prefects, or, more
shocking still, mere praesides who had secured the honorary rank of
ex-vicars, ex-proconsuls or even ex-prefects. The former are told
that they are to rank only among actual ex-proconsuls, with
precedence over honorary ex-proconsuls. The latter are to give
precedence even to ex-consulars who have really governed a
province.
30
A further complication was caused by the practice, which grew
up in the fifth century, of granting honorary offices which ranked
as if they were actual (inter agentes), and whose holders were styled
titular (vacantes), as opposed to merely honorary (honorarii). As a
result Theodosius II had to draw up a yet more elaborate table of
precedence among illustres. First came those who had actually held
illustrious offices; second those who had received, while present at
court, a titular office; third those upon whom a titular office had
been conferred in absence; fourth those who had received per-
sonally from the emperor honorary codicils; and fifth those to
whom honorary codicils had been sent in absence. All members of
the first group, even those who had held the lowest illustrious
office of comes rei privatae, ranked above all of the other four
groups. But within the last four groups regard was had to the
rank of the titular or honorary office held, so that an honorary ex-
prefect took precedence over a titular ex-quaestor. Finally a
special exception was made for titular officers who had been
entrusted with some extraordinary commission. Thus Germanus,
a magister mi!itum vacans, had been one of the commanders of the
expedition against the Vandals in 44I, and Pentadius, a praejectus
praetorio vacans, had organised its commissariat. In such circum-
stances the titular office ranked as active.B
1
Members of the senatorial order possessed certain fiscal and
jurisdictional privileges. Constantius II granted all senators
immunity from extraordinary levies and sordida munera. This
privilege was curtailed by Gratian, who in 382 declared that all
must pay extraordinaria and that only the holders of the highest
offices (down to the comites consistoriani) should be immune from
sordida munera; this rule was extended to the Eastern parts by
Theodosius I in 390. In 409 illustres were accorded immunity
not only from sordida munera but also from extraordinaria. Senators
could also in the early fourth century, in virtue of their theoretical
domicile at Rome, claim the jurisdiction of the prefect of the city,
whether they were sued civilly or accused on capital charges.
This privilege was likewise whitded away in the course of time as
far as humbler senators were concerned, but maintained for the
benefit of illustres.32
But the most important privilege of the aristocracy was exemp-
tion from curial burdens. Members of the equestrian order and
comites enjoyed immunity as being absent on the public service.
Immunity had under the Principate been granted under this head
only for the actual period of public service, but by Diocletian's
time it had been extended to all who held equestrian rank. Con-
stantine and his sons, alarmed by the flood of decurions who
obtained codicils with a view to evading their curial obligations,
endeavoured to restrict the privilege to those who had actually
held offices, or had honesdy earned honorary codicils, and to
insist that decurions must have performed their duties to their
cities before seeking equestrian posts or the comitiva. It is doubtful
whether they had much success, but the problem solved itself
when decurions transferred their ambitions to the superior attrac-
tions of the senatorial order.
Senators enjoyed exemption from curial duties on the ground
that they were citizens of Rome (or Constantinople), and as such
ceased to belong to their native cities. When decurions began to
enter the order in significant numbers, the imperial government
again became alarmed, and with reason, for since senatorial rank
was hereditary, not only did decurions secure immunity for them-
selves, but their families became exempt for ever. At first attempts
were made to prevent decurions from entering the senate, but as
these proved unavailing the immunity was in 390 abolished for
senators of curial origin. This rule was relaxed in 397 in favour of
illustres. In 436 it was tightened up again so that in future only
those decurions -..vho obtained illustrious rank by office gained
immunity. Zeno confined the privilege to those who gained the
higher group of illustrious offices, and this remained the rule
under Justinian. Under all these laws the immunity once gained
was transmitted to sons born after its acquisition. 33
As against these privileges and immunities the aristocracy was
subject to certain special obligations and financial charges. The
former were not very onerous. All honorati, including senators,
except those of the highest rank, were obliged to attend the
assemblies of their province or diocese. Senators were technically
PRIVILEGES AND BURDENS
537
obliged to attend meetings of the senate, and had to obtain leave
of absence (commcatus) to visit the provinces. Standing leave to
reside in the provinces was in fact regularly accorded, but a formal
grant of commeatus was required until Theodosius II released all
spectabiles and clarissimi from this technicality: illustres still had to
obtain permission to leave the capital.
34
Honorati might also be charged with special administrative duties:
senators were exempted from this obligation, which fell only on
honorati of equestrian rank or comites. Valentinian and Valens
tried to make use of men of this category as collectors of the
clothing levy and managers of the posting stations. This attempt
was soon abandoned, but tasks of a more honourable kind, the
audit of accounts (discussiones) and the revision of the census
(peraequationes), were commonly imposed on honorati. Such posts
were remunerated and might in dishonest hands yield considerable
profits, but they were onerous and responsible, and were evidendy
regarded by most as a disagreeable imposition. 35
Nor were the financial charges a very serious matter for men of
the class concerned. From Constantine's time occasional levies of
horses or recruits were made on all honorati: they are last recorded
in the middle of the fifth century. Senators had to contribute to
the gift of gold (aurum oblaticium) which the House was expected to
make to the emperors on their accession and successive quin-
quennial celebrations. They also from the time of Constantine
until that of Marcian paid a small regular surtax, the gleba or jollis,
on their lands: for this purpose a newly enrolled senator had to
make a full return of his property to the office of the urban pre-
fecture, and all subsequent additions to it had to be reported. 36
A more serious burden on senators was the production of games
at Rome and Constantinople. Under Constantine quaestors,
praetors and suffect consuls all gave games at Rome; the last later
ceased to do so, and by the end of the fourth century the poorest
senators might be let off with one show only, the quaestorian,
which were the cheapest. In Constantinople praetorian games
were instituted by Constantius II; no others are recorded. Senators
might spend as much as they liked on their games, and at Rome
members of great families, who had a tradition of munificence and
ample fortunes to indulge their tastes, sometimes squandered
fabulous sums on them. Symmachus is said to have spent zooo lb.
gold on his son's praetorian games, and Petronius Maximus,
one of the richest men in the empire, double that sum on his own. 37
The ostentation of the old families set a high standard of ex-
penditure at Rome, a standard which was continually forced up by
their mutual emulation. In the interest of lesser senators the
emperors from time to time endeavoured to curb extravagance.
Symmachus in his official capacity as prefect of the city thanked
the emperor for such a measure. 'When vile ostentation had
overburdened senatorial duties with heavy expenses, you have
restored the old sanity to our manners and expenditure, so that
neither will a meagre display of games bring discredit on colleagues
whose means are not sufficient, nor will ill-considered profusion
plunge into ruin those who through shame attempt what is
beyond their strength.'38
It was of course possible, though not popular, for a senator to
fulfil his obligations for a much more modest sum than Symmachus
or Petronius spent. Provincial senators could send a sum of money
to Rome and have their games celebrated by the censua!es, the
officials who maintained the register of the senate and the records
of the property of senators: a law of 372 even mentions a scheme
whereby two or three poor senators might share expenses.
Symmachus alludes with contempt to the 'mediocrity' of such
performances, and evidently regarded the absentees who refused to
face the music as mean-spirited. By contrast he praises a praetor
who had had the courage to give modest games in person. 'Let
those who shirk their celebrations,' he writes, 'hear with what a
moderate expenditure Aedesius, a praetor of last year, presented
the urban games, and learn from his example what honour and
consideration is accorded to magistrates who are present in
person.'
39
It is unfortunately impossible to put any figure on the cost of a
moderate show. Constantine imposed on quaestors, praetors and
consuls who failed to present themselves for their games a fine of
5 o,ooo modii of wheat, to be delivered to the granaries of Rome;
which would have cost the delinquent something like 2ooo solidi.
The same penalty was re-enacted in 3 54 and 365. It does not,
however, follow that games cost less than this. The penalty was
for contumacious absence (without imperial permission), and
there is no evidence that those who paid it were released from the
expenses of their games.4o
At Constantinople the situation was very different. There was
no tradition here, and no ancient and wealthy families to set the
pace. Constantius II and his successors accordingly had to enact
the amounts which the praetors had to spend. Constantius in 340
laid down a scale of 50, 40 and 30 lb. silver, plus 2j,ooo, 2o,ooo
and 'I 5 ,ooo folies for the three praetorships which he then instituted.
As the value of the fo!lis at this date is unknown, the exact cost
cannot be calculated, but later figures suggest that it was modest.
In 36r two of the five praetors who then existed were relieved
P.RIVILEGES AND BURDENS
539
of games, and ordered instead to contribute rooo and 500 lb. silver
respectively to the public works of the capital. In 3 84 the praetor-
ships, which had been reduced to four, were doubled in number.
The first pair were ordered to spend rooo lb. of silver between them,
the second and third pairs 4 5o lb. and the fourth pair 2 5o lb.
Later in his reign Theodosius suspended all theatrical games and
made the praetors contribute to .his aqueduct instead, but in 396
Arcadius assigned three to theatrical displays, two to celebrate
his own birthday, the third that of Honorius. A few years later L
was ruled that praetors of the first class should not be compelled
to spend more than 300 lb. silver on their games, and that those
of the second and third classes should pay r 50 and roo lb. One
praetor had recently been allowed to spend as much as 500 lb.
silver on theatrical and circus games, but this extravagance was
apparently now suppressed.41
These sums cannot be called extravagant in relation to senatorial
incomes. The highest, rooo lb. silver, is equivalent to 5000 solidi,
and in the last two decades of the fourth century the maximum was
scaled down to 2500 and then to Ijoo solidi. The minimum
expenditure was only 5 oo solidi. Though the Constantinopolitan
senate was by no means so wealthy a body as the Roman, it is
hard to believe that payments on this scale could have been a serious
strain on the resources of the richer members.
The most magnificent games were naturally those given by the
ordinary consuls. They were permitted certain extravagancies
which by a law of 384 were forbidden to lower magistrates. They
might send out invitation cards in the form of ivory diptychs-
which are treasured in many museums today; others had to be
content with diptychs of baser material. They might scatter gold
coins to the crowd, while others might throw only silver, and
small coins only, not larger than sixty to the pound. Marcian
abolished this custom, and instead made the consuls contribute
roo lb. gold to the aqueduct fund, but Justinian permitted the
scattering of small silver coins. Justinian describes the somewhat
reduced programmes of entertainments which the consuls gave at
Constantinople in his day. He was to give only seven shows.
The nature of the first and the last, when he received and laid
down his insignia of office, are not specified and were perhaps
merely processions. The second and the sixth were mappae or
chariot races, the third a wild beast hunt in the theatre ("v.,)ywv),
the fourth a show of prizefighters ("'ayued:nov) with more fighting
with beasts, the fifth a theatrical show with clowns, singers and
dancers, vulgarly known as 'the tarts' ("'oevai). The programme
according to Procopius cost 2000 lb. gold.42
c
The magistrates who gave the games (apart from the ordinary
consuls) were elected by the senate. They had to be nominated
ten years in advance in order to give them ample time to accumulate
the requisite funds. This rule is mentioned at Constantinople in
361 and at Rome in 372. Later so long notice was apparently
found unnecessary at Constantinople. A law of 408 speaks of
three years as the waiting period fixed by the existing law, and
declares that even this regulation had fallen into desuetude as
being needless. It enacts that delay shall be allowed in future only
to necessitous cases, and that the senate shall have discretion to
vary it from two years up to five according to the candidate's
financial circumstances.43
We have no detailed information on the procedure of election
at Rome. At Constantinople Constantius II laid down elaborate
rules. In 3 56 he enacted that a quorum of 5o members was required
at the election meeting, which was to be held on his birthday, and
if necessary be adjourned to the next day or even longer. Three
years later he ruled that only those who had themselves already
given games should designate the praetors. In 361 he ordered that
there must be present at the election ten of the highest ranking
senators, former ordinary consuls or prefects or proconsuls, and
the distinguished philosopher Themistius, as well as those who
had already held the praetorship.44
Election meant in effect nominating the requisite number of
persons. Some willing candidates were certainly forthcoming
at Rome, where the great families felt it a matter of noblesse oblige
to offer games, but even here it was necessary to nominate persons
against their will, or in their absence and without their knowledge.
In Constantinople the newly formed aristocracy, which had no
traditions to maintain, was reluctant to shoulder the burden.
Constantius II had to lecture his senators about their lack of
public spirit. 'You surely remember, conscript fathers, and never
will it be forgotten, that the ex-proconsul Facundus and the
ex-vicar Arsenius wore the splendid insignia of praetors, and neither
of them thought that the praetorship was beneath their dignity.
What more illustrious example can be found than these? This fact
ought surely to have persuaded others invested with the offices of
proconsul and vicar that the praetorship is not below their merits.
The splendid rods of office should be an object of ambition, the
glory of such a title should be coveted and no one ought to resist
nomination.'
45
Candidates nominated in absence were difficult to bring up to
scratch. At Constantinople five months were allowed to the
officials of the prefecture to serve notice of nomination on them
PRIVILEGES AND BURDENS 541
and another seven months for their objections to be heard. At
Rome candidates apparently evaded the officials for years. V alen-
tinian I wrote ironically to the urban prefect, who had apparently
complained of this difficulty: 'Let us suppose it possible that those
designated can elude the diligence of those who search for them
in the first or the second or the third year: surely they can be
found in the remaining seven.' And when at length they had
accepted their non;ination, too often they to present
selves in the appoiDted year. In 3 54 Constantius II had to Issue
orders to the praetorian prefect of Italy to round up all senators
who were due to give games, and compel them to come to Rome.
Forty years later a procons.ul of
for his lack of firmness ID dealing with senators resident ID J;is
province. 'It is a serious thing that when a man of noble family
holds supreme authority in Africa some of our colleagues evade
their duties at Rome, and that a year almost barren of games
should bring the proconsu!ar office into odium.'
46
In these circumstances it is not surprising that the senate found
the elections an invidious and embarrassing business. The nomina-
tion of praetors at Constantinople was eventually in 393 left to
the censuales, who, since they knew the names and addresses of all
senators and their property assessments, must always have played
a large part in drawing up the list of candidates. The senate had
already been rebuked in 361 for allowing them to make the
nominations.
47
Exemption from the praetorship could be granted by the em-
peror by adlectio. The term is a survival from the Principate, when
the emperor could not only grant the latus clavus (corresponding
to the later codicilli clarissimatus), whiclt authorised the recipient
to stand for the quaestorship, but also adlect a man direct into the
senate with appropriate seniority, to rank with ex-praetors (inter
praetorios) or with ex-consuls (inter consulares). When these grades
had ceased to have any significance, adlectio, or the grant of
codicilli praetorii or consulares, survived as a device for enrolling a
senator among those who had performed their praetorian games.
The privilege was regularly granted to palatine civil servants on
their attaining senatorial rank but to very few others. In 367
adlectio was accorded to certain comites and tribuni. In 396 exemption
from the praetorship granted to duces who had WOfl: their
promotion by long service, or were members of the conststory.
In 439 senators of curial origin, who complained that they could
not simultaneously fulfil their obligations to the senate and to
their own cities, were excused the praetorship.
48
The laws imply that all senators not specifically exempted had
542
to take their turn. This cannot in fact have been necessary. At
Constantinople at the end of the fourth century, with only eight
praetorships to fill each year and two thousand senators on the
roll, only about one in ten can have been called upon to serve. If
the selection had been made fairly it should not have been difficult
to find enough candidates to whom the relatively modest expense
would have been a negligible item. Evidently, however, wealthy
senators resident at the capital found means of evading the office,
and it was imposed on provincial members of modest means, who
found it a vexatious imposition. Theodoret wrote to his grand
friends at Constantinople on behalf of two victims. Euthalius was
an elderly retired memoria/is who had taken holy orders: his
nomination must have been an official blunder, since members of
the sacra scrinia were legally exempt. Theocles could claim no
legal immunity, but had, according to Theodoret, inherited only
one farm, which gave him a bare livelihood.
4
9
It was no doubt because of such hard cases that Marcian released
spectabi!es and c!arissimi resident in the provinces from the obliga-
tion of the praetorship. Henceforth there were to be only three
praetors a year, and even they were released from any compulsory
expenditure. The praetorship was still regarded as a burden at
the end of the fifth century, but in the sixth the praetorian games
seem to have died at Constantinople. In the West the praetorship
continued in its traditional form, and Boethius still complains of it
as a heavy burden on senators. 50
Mter Marcian senators in the Eastern empire had few if any
special financial obligations. The g!eba and the praetorship, as a
compulsory charge, had been formally abolished, and nothing is
heard of the levies of horses and recruits formerly made on
honorati. The two lower classes of senators had also lost most of
their legal privileges: they were no longer exempt from extra-
ordinaria and sordida munera, they no longer enjoyed any jurisdic-
tional prerogatives, and those promoted from the curial order
were not released from their obligations to their native cities.
J!!ustres were in . a more favoured position, for they, while they
were relieved of special senatorial burdens, retained or regained
the privileges which all senators had once shared. All il!ustres
were exempt from extraordinary levies of all kinds, and enjoyed
special rights, if prosecuted, in the courts of law. Holders of
offices-or l).fter Zeno the higher illustrious offices-
could moreover achieve release from curial status for themselves
and their descendants.
THE VALUE OF 543
The legal privileges of rank, and in particula.r from curial
obligations, were undoubtedly one of the.l?rmcipal reasons why
admission to the equestrian order, the comztzva and the senate was
so greatly coveted. The laws of the Theodosian Code frequently
denounce those who obtain honorary codicils of rank in order to
evade their curial duties, and Libanius often pleads for the grant of
an office to a decurion because he is allegedly too poor to support
the burden of his status. But it may be doubted whether on purely
financial grounds it was always a gain to rise from curial to sena-
torial status. The initial cost must generally have been heavy,
since apart from fees large sums had to be lrud out m
securing suffragia, and the praetorshlp seems .to ha;re ?een
regarded as being e;ren .more than
In one of his letters Libanms, urgmg a young fnend, Hyperechius,
to resist his father's ambition to secure him a seat in the senate,
stresses these points. 'If you make the right decision you will
be able to serve your native city, a course which will bring you
glory and power, and above all will do justice to your. family,
whereas your father will send you to throw your money mto the
the sea. For at Constantinople you will gain nothing but expense,
while at home you will be impoverished by your expenses else-
where; your money will thus be lost by the decision of hin: who
has given it to you. Persuade him not to emulate the cow m the
proverb who, by kicking, spills the milk that is being drawn from
her. If you do what he wants, you will throw: a":'ay a part of
your property, a_nd willl!ve rest of your life m .torpid
seeing your neighbours affrurs prosper, and with no gam to
yourself except an empty title.'
51
If the financial gain was questionable when senatoriaJ. rank
brought release from curial duties, it was certainly a financial .loss
for a decurion to become a senator after 390, when he was obl!ged
to shoulder his curial and senatorial burdens concurrently.
Nevertheless decurions continued to press into the senate. There
were evidently other attractions even more important than the
legal privileges which made senatorial rank desirable.
The common human desire to have a handle to one's name and
to take precedence over one's .neighbours accounts f?r much.
Titles were clearly much valued m the later Roman empire. They
were regularly used not only in official documents but in private
correspondence, and they steadily became more and bom-
bastic; the highest class were not content by the middle of
fifth century to be merely i!!ustres, they were also magniftcentzsszmz,
the upper stratum among them were g!oriosissimi. The high
:mportance attached to precedence among the aristocracy is
illustrated by the elaborate laws regulating it which have been
quoted above. These laws refer primarily to sessions of the senate
and the consistory, but similar regulations governed protocol in
the provinces. The 'order of salutation' laid down by the consular
of Numidia in Julian's reign is preserved in an inscription. First
came senators, comites, former comites, and holders of imperial
offices (administratores); next the princeps and cornicu!arius of the
ojjicium had local precedence over pa!atini; in the third class came
presidents of the provincial assembly (coronati), and so on down
the scale. Ho.w. things were taken is shown by a
Jaw of V alentm1an II, m which he solemnly warns his praetorian
prefects that domestici protectores have the right to kiss vicars,
and that refusal of this honour to them will be penalised as
sacrilege.
52
Precedence and protocol were, however, not matters of mere
vanity. They had a very real if rather intangible value. A pro-
vincial governor could order mere decurions about, and too often
ignored their legal privileges, and flogged them if he was annoyed
with thc;m. But if a decurion became c!arissimus, things were
rather different. He was now of equal rank with the governor
if not superior to him. No governor would venture to flog
c!arissimus, however provocative his conduct.
simple. for personal security was. a potent reason for
seeking adm1ss1on to the ranks of the amtocracy. Libanius
passionately declares that it was the growing habit of flogging
decurions that drove them to seek senatorial rank. That he was
not entirely wrong is often admitted by the emperors themselves.
In 392 Theodosius allowed a decurion who had fulfilled his duties
to acquire the comitiva tertii ordinis, 'in order that the dignity
granted to him may protect him from all injuries', and in 419 the
same modest rank was accorded to the heads of the butchers'
guild at Rome so that 'no fear of corporal injury may terrifY them'.
4'!.9 Flo.rentius? prefect of the East, reported that
certam curta!es, Wishing to protect themselves from the injuries of
gov<:rn?rs, have. taken in the prerogat.ive of the senatorial
digruty -and this at a ttme when they remamed subject to their
curial obligations, in addition to their senatorial burdens.ss
Rank conv<:yed more advantages than mere
personal secunty. L1baruus co.mplams bitterly that t_he right of
entree to the governor and of s1ttmg on the bench bes1de him was
abused by men of rank to secure unlawful favours and pervert the
.course of justice. Once again imperial legislation bears out
THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE SENATE 545
Libanius' strictures. Gratian in 3 77 forbade private afternoon
visits to a provincial governor by anyone of the same province,
whether known to him or unknown, who claimed admission on
the score of rank.
54
Official rank not only enabled the holder to exercise backstairs
influence upon the governor; it made it possible for him to flout
his authority. In 595, three years after Theodosms had allowed
the comitiva to decurions, Arcadius had to issue a warning:
'decurions who have received an honorary comitiva ought to fear
those to whose government they have been committed and not to
imagine that they have earned their rank in order to despise the
commands of provincial governors.' Florentius continued his
report of 439 by remarking that curia!es admitted to the senate,
on the pretext that their resources were exhausted by the praetor-
ship, refused to perform their local obligations. He goes on:
'But you also perceive that the public interest is damaged by the
fact that, owing to the respect paid to their dignity, they place
themselves beyond the coercive powers of the provme1al governors.
The collection of arrears flags when the exactor pays deference to
the debtor .'
55
The decurions concerned were no richer than they had been;
they were the poorer by the expenses of a and by
the large sums which they must ha:re spent m. secutlfolg thc;1r
codicils. They had gained no r1ght to decline their .cunal
duties, still less to refuse to pay their taxes. But the mere title of
senator was by itself enough to enable them to flout the law.
Such being the power of a title,. it is wonder that <;>fficial rank,
even if it cost money to obtam and mvolved financial burdens,
was coveted by all could afford it and by many not.
This helps to explam why so many men were willmg to mcur
huge debts to obtain ?ffices, whose profits, increased by
extortion and corruptiOn, barely covered their cost: It. was not so
much the office which they ;valued as the rank which 1t conveyed
on them in after life. As Salvian in his usual exaggerated way
puts it: 'an office once held gives them the privilege of having a
perpetual right of rapine.'
5
6
The aristocracy as it expanded became more and more mixed
in its social and geographical and racial origins. The Roman
senate contained a nucleus of ancient families who claimed descent
from the Scipios and the Gracchi. Their cannot be
verified, but it would be rash to deny that by adoptions or through
the female line they may have been able to trace some tenuous link
with the Republican nobility. It may be that in the veins of Anicius
Acilius Glabrio Faustus, consul in 43 8, there flowed a few drops
of the blood of the Acilius Glabrio who achieved nobility for his
family by winning the consulship in 191 BC. But whatever the
truth of the matter, there is no doubt that these families believed
themselves to be of vast antiquity and that their claims were
generally accepted. Many of them, notably the great clan of the
Anicii with its many branches, continued to flourish down to the
sixth century.
57
The senate of Constantinople had no such ancient core. It
no doubt contained a number of families whose origins went
back further than the reign of Constantius II, for he presumably
enrolled in it senators domiciled in his dominions; he certainly
transferred to it the senators of Macedonia and Illyricum in 3 57.
But these provincial senatorial families are not likely to have been
of any great antiquity. Libanius' jibe was justified: it could not
be claimed 'that the whole senate consisted of nobles descended
from four generations or more of ancestors who had been magis-
trates and ambassadors and done public service'. Libanius
maliciously goes on to cite a number of great senators of the
previous generations who had risen from the humblest origins-
Ablabius, who had started life as a cohortalis of the province of
Crete, Philippus, whose father was a sausage maker, Datianus, the
son of a cloakroom attendant in the baths, Dulcitius whose father
was a Phrygian fuller, Domitianus, the son of a working man
Taurus and Elpidius.5s '
The C'?des strongly suggest that the principal recruiting ground
from which first the equestrian order and the comitiva, and later the
senate, both in the West and in the East, drew their new members,
was the curial class. This was only natural. The higher strata of
the curial class comprised the elite of the provinces. Its members
could often boast of very respectable pedigrees, even if they could
not, like Synesius, trace their ancestry back to the Heraclids. They
were men of substance, owning considerable landed estates. In
their humbler sphere they served the state, not only holding office
in :heir cit!es, but as provincial high priests providing games for
their provmces. They were men of culture, educated in the
rhetorical schools. Superior decurions in fact conformed to the
conventional standards of nobility. They were such men as the
emperors would naturally wish to honour, and the senate would
welc<?me as colleagues. Wh3Lt was more important, perhaps, in
practice, they possessed social connections which enabled them
to secure the interest of great men, and money with which to buy
THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE SENATE
547
their interest if need be. Their education moreover qualified them
for the higher professions, in particular the bar, which were
regular gateways to the senate. 59
Many decurions earned admission to the senate by tenure of a
dignitas: this was only rarely prohibited and in practice always
possible. Most no doubt went no further than a provincial
governorship or a vicariate, thus qualifying as clarissimi or specta-
biles, but in the East, at any rate, some rose to the illustrious offices
and in this way entered the inner circle of the aristocracy, which
became in the latter part of the fifth century the effective senate.
Zeno found it necessary to enact that only the higher illustrious
offices-the urban and praetorian prefectures and the masterships
of the soldiers-should carry with them exemption from curial
duties, and that decurions who had since the beginning of his
reign held the lesser offices from quaestor to comes rei privatae
should remain subject to their civil obligations. A law of Anas-
tasius annulling Zeno' s in so far as it was retrospective proves that
a substantial number of decurions must have held the lesser illus-
trious offices in the first ten years of Zeno's reign. Justinian in
53 8 still speaks of himself as appointing curiales to the highest
offices which carried exemption.so
It is evident that even larger numbers of decurions gained access
to the imperial aristocracy by obtaining for themselves, by influence
or bribery or both, codicils of rank or honorary offices. Such
promotions, which had not been earned by any service to the state,
were constantly denounced by the imperial government, but these
very denunciations make it plain that they always continued to be
common. Here again decurions were at first content with codicils
of the clarissimate or equivalent honorary offices, but as the lower
grades of the senatorial order sank in value they sought-and
obtained-honorary illustrious offices. Justinian still granted them
to curiales, only reaffirming that the beneficiaries, while becoming
members of the senate, did not escape their curial obligations. sr
The palatine militiae were a regular avenue of advancement.
All the more distinguished corps during the fourth and early
fifth centuries successively secured the privilege that their senior
members on retirement or during their last years of service were
automatically accorded codicils of senatorial rank, and in some of
the most distinguished all members were graded as senators.
The notaries w r ~ by 3 8 I all senators, the senior members (the
tribunes) being spectabiles and the junior (the domestic{) clarissimi.
By a law of the same year the proximi of the sacra scrinia retired as
spectabiles, and in 41 o all senior clerks of the scrinia were accorded
the clarissimate. In 386 the principes of the agentes in rebus became
clarissimi, and in 426 spectabi!es. The silentiaries by a law of 415
achieved the rank of spectabi!es if they retired as decurions of the
sacred palace, and in 43 7 all became senators on retirement after
thirteen or more years of service. Between 414 and 416 the ten
senior members of the domestici and the protectores became c!arissimi.
The retiring chief clerks of the !argitiones and the res privata were
also in 408 and 425 awarded the c!arissimate on retirement, but
soon after renounced the expensive honour. Outside the palace
even the highest ministries were much more sparingly rewarded.
It was not until the reign of Anastasius that the principal officials
of the praetorian prefecture received on retirement a comitiva
primi ordinis, which carried the rank of c!arissimus.
6
2
Apart from these routine honours pa!atini enjoyed exceptional
opportunities for obtaining special promotion to honorary or
active offices, either during their service or as a reward when they
retired. In the reign of Constantius II many notaries received
spectacular advancement, even to the praetorian prefecture and
the ordinary consulship. No other corps achieved such outstanding
successes but a law of 3 So implies that retired principes of the
agonies in rebus were often awarded provincial governorships, and
laws of 42 3 and 43 2 suggest that silentiaries might well be promoted
to higher things before completing their service.
Many decurions wormed their way into the palatine service
despite laws to the contrary, and thus managed to achieve sena-
tonal rank. But the palatine service also provided an avenue of
advancement for persons of humbler status, especially in the fourth
century when access to it was relatively easy. Under Constantius II
the notaries were still recruited from the lower classes, and it was
in this way that the Constantinopolitan senators whose lowly
origins Libanius held up to scorn had achieved their rank. But by
the early fifth century the notaries had become a fashionable corps,
in which hereditary senators, including young men of the noblest
families, did nominal service, and men of humble origins could no
longer hope to secure a place in it. Other palatine services under-
went a similar evolution. Places in the corps of the domestici and
protectores were by the sixth century only obtainable by purchase,
and at very high prices. In the silentiaries and the scho!ares too
posts had to be bought. All these corps seem to have become
preserves of the wealthy. Entry into the sacra scrinia was also by
purch!lse, but here the price was not prohibitive, and these minis-
tries and the corps of the agonies in rebus still provided a channel of
advancement to the humble. There were in the reign of Valen-
tinian Ill men serving in the sacra scrinia who were descended
from co!oni. It was still in Justinian's reign the anomalous privilege
THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION. OF THE SENATE 549
of principes of the agentes in rebus and proximi of the sacra scrinia
that they secured exemption from curial obligations for themselves
and their children born after their promotion, although the rank
of spectabi!is no longer carried this immunity.
63
The ba:r provided access to the senate in two ways. Barristers,
usually after preliminary service as assessors, were frequently,
and indeed regularly, appointed to provincial governorships.
Senior advocates of the high courts were in the late fifth and sixth
centuries often promoted direct to the praetorian prefecture.
Lawyers of distinction were often chosen as magistri scriniorum and
quaestors. On the other hand from the early fifth century barristers
of the high courts who did not aspire to office received senatorial
rank on retirement, and from 440 an honorary comitiva consistoriana
which carried the rank of spectabi!is. In the lower courts such
rewards were given more sparingly and later. Barristers enrolled
at the bars of the comes rei privatae and the proconsul of Asia were
only accorded the rank of comites primi ordinis clarissimi on retire-
ment--and this as the result of a special petition to Anastasius.
While a high proportion of barristers came of curial families,
some were of humbler origin. Maximinus, who ultimately became
praetorian prefect to Valentinian I, was the son of a cohorta!is, and
in the fifth and sixth centuries cohorta!es seemed to have rivalled
curia/os in the legal profession. By this time there was a marked
tendency for the membership of the profession to become heredi-
tary, but it still provided a channel whereby cohorta!es and curia/os
could rise into the aristocracy. Justinian confirmed the anomalous
rule that advocati ftsci of the praetorian and urban prefectures
secured immunity from curial or cohortal obligations, and only
limited the privilege by confining it to sons born after their fathers'
promotion.
64
The other learned professions]rovided less regular opportunities
for promotion. Doctors .coul only hope to achieve senatorial
rank by becoming archiatri sacri pa!atii. Professors of the imperial
university of Constantinople were from 42 5 awarded a comitiva
primi ordinis with the rank of spectabi!is after twenty years' service.
But rhetoricians and poets were not infrequently accorded digni-
tates, active or honorary. Libanius was offered the rank of quaestor
by Julian, and that of praetorian prefect by Theodosius I; the
Athenian philosopher Celsus was, as we have seen, admitted to
the Roman senate on Symmachus' recommendation; the poet
Claudian enjoyed the rank of a tribune and notary. All the pro-
fessors of law at Berytus and Constantinople who took part in the
compilation of .the Code an? the. Digest and Institutes enjoyed
honorary illustnous rank. It 1s unhkely that many members of the
learned professions came from the lower classes for the education
was long and correspondingly But some men
quite modest sta!=Us must have risen through them into the
aristocracy. Augustme, the son of a poor decurion of a small
town, was hoping for honours, as he himself tells us, when he
decided to. abandon his career as a professor for the Christian life. as
The mam channel whereby men of the lowest degree could rise
into the aristocracy was the army. It was no doubt never easy for
the common soldier to achieve promotion. Most regimental
officers were probably at all rimes sons of officers or decurions,
w:ho had been. d!rectly commissioned, and it was normally these
d1rectly comffi!ss10ned officers who were promoted to the hisher
ranks .of. the service. But were not infrequently g1ven
as.protectores or tribunes or prefects, and thus rose
mto the equestnan order, and, in the fifth and sixth centuries into
the clarissimate. Ranker officers generally achieved their
too late to go much further, but some went on to be duces, comites
rei mi!itaris a?-d even magistri mi!itum, thus rising into the highest
class of the illustrate. Such cases as the elder Gratian Arbetio
and J ustin show that it was always possible for a peasant fo
a senator, a consul or even an emperor. ss
The senatorial order was thus by the end of the fourth century
a very mixed body. At Rome the contrasts were sharpest. Here
the most blue-blooded aristocrats, who claimed to trace their
noble ancestors back over many centuries, rubbed shoulders with
of.all kinds. The majority came from good middle-class
which had generations held a leading position in their
own c1t1es and provmces, but had until recently never aspired to
the Roman But amongst them there were also rising barris-
who ffilght be sons of cohorta!es, rhetoricians and poets, who
have come from the poorest homes, elderly ex-palatine
officials whose not too remote ancestors had been working men
or peasants, tied to the soil, and grizzled and illiterate generals,
who as boys had followed the plough, not to speak of retired
eunuchs who had been bought in the slave markets of Armenia or
Persia.
In each succeeding generation the sons of these parvenus
became assimilated, in families might become almost
as noble as the ancient anstocratlc houses. But in the West the
sena!orial. order was already .by the _latter part of the fourth century
stratified mto classes and this stratification tended to harden. The
old nobility together with the descendants of men who had in the
fourth century achieved the highest rank formed an irmer aristo-
cracy which almost monopolised the illustrious offices, and lesser
THE SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF THE SENATE Jjl
senators rarely rose beyond the rank of spectabilis or clarissimus.
New blood must have continued to flow into these lower grades
of the order; Sidonius Apollinaris tells the story of Paeonius, an
ambitious upstart of curial birth who used his illgotten wealth to
marry into a noble family and rise to the rank of spectabilis. But it
became increasingly difficult to rise into the illustrious class;
Sidonius was shocked to the core when the lowborn Paeonius
took advantage of the interregnum which followed A vitus' death
to insinuate himself into the praetorian prefecture of the Gauls and
thus become a real senator.67
At Constantinople there were no ancient noble families. In the
fourth century the majority of eastern senators could at best boast
of respectable middle-class ancestry, and not a few of the greatest
magnates were, as Libanius complained, parvenus who had risen
from the humblest origins. By the fifth century a hereditary nobility
had formed itself from the descendants of fourth-century senators,
but naturally it lacked the prestige of the ancient aristocracy of
Rome. Some of the greatest families were descended from the
parvenus on whom Libanius heaped scorn. Aurelian and Caesarius,
whom Synesius depicts as great nobles in the reign of Arcadius,
were the sons of that Taurus who had under Constantius II risen
from a mere notary to praetorian prefect and ordinary consul.
Aurelian's son Taurus was in his turn consul in 428 and praetorian
prefect. Philip, the sausage maker's son, founded a notable family.
His grandson was the great Anthemius, who was virtual regent of
the empire in the early fifth century, Anthemius' son was Isidore,
praetorian prefect and consul in 436, his grandson, another
Anthemius, was chosen by Leo to be Augustus of the West. In
the next generation Anthemius' son Marcian was consul in 469
or 472, married the younger daughter of the emperor Leo, and
raised an unsuccessful rebellion against Zeno in 479 The family
nevertheless continued to hold its own. The empress Ariadne
strongly pressed Anastasius to appoint Anthemius, another son
of the western emperor, to the praetorian prefecture of the East;
the Anthemius who was consul in 5 I 5 was perhaps his son.
68
In the East, as in the West, there was thus some tendency for
the great families to establish a prescriptive claim to the illustrious
offices. But the inner aristocracy of the il!ustres never became so
exclusive a body as at Rome. New men of curial origin were
still obtaining codicils of illustrious rank under Justinian, and not
a few were promoted to the illustrious offices. The praetorian
prefecture was regularly given to barristers, and sometimes to
civil servants, and the mastership of the soldiers to officers of
humble birth. Justinian's senate included many members whose
5 52 SENATORS AND HONORATI
ancestors had for several generations back held illustrious rank.
But it also included not a few whose fathers or grandfathers had
been spectabiles or clarissimi, or even simple commoners.
Senators were as mixed in their geographical and racial origins
as in their social background. The senate drew its recruits from
all the provinces of the empire without distinction. Men of
Western origin naturally predominated at Rome, and those from
the Eastern provinces at Constantinople, but there was some
migration from East to West, and West to East, particularly in
the fourth century. Westerners, especially Pannonians, came in
the train of Valens to Constantinople, and were followed by Gauls
and Spaniards under Theodosius I. Easterners followed Theodo-
sius to Rome when he reconquered the West from the usurpers
Maximus and Eugenius. The great majority of senators were
naturally Roman citizens by birth, but the army contributed a
substantial infusion of barbarians, mainly Germans, but including
some Persians and other Orientals, even into the highest ranks of
the aristocracy.
From the time of Constantine a high proportion of the magistri
militum, both in the West and in the East, were of barbarian origin,
and though there were temporary reactions, notably in the West
after the fall of Stilicho, barbarians continued to receive the highest
military offices down to the early sixth century. These men seem
on the whole to have been assimilated into the higher aristocracy.
They and their sons and daughters intermarried with the great
noble families, even with the imperial house itself: Theodosius I
gave his niece Serena to the Vandal Stilicho, and Arcadius married
the daughter of Bauto the Frank. Some of them founded families
which proudly bore Germanic or Oriental names generation after
generation. Genealogies are difficult to trace, but Flavius Areo-
bindus Dagalaifus, consul of 5 o6, who married Anicia J uliana of
the great Roman house of the Anicii, was the son of Dagalaifus,
described as a most glorious patrician under Zeno, and consul in
46r, and he the son of Areobindus, master of the soldiers and
consul in 434 Hormisdas, praetorian prefect of the East in 448-50,
and Pusaeus, consul in 467, probably derived their names from
generals w:ho the empire i? the fourth century:
Horm1sdas, the eXIled son of a Pers1an king, had been magister
militum under Julian, and a Persian officer named Pusaeus had
deserted to J ulian and been made dux of Egypt. 69
The senatorial order as it expanded became more and more
THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SENATORS 553
widely diffused in its domicile. Technically, as we have seen, all
senators were supposed to reside at Rome or .
Many senators, particularly those of the old families, d1d. m fact
reside at Rome, or at least kept up a town house there, which they
regularly used, though they spent many months of the year in
their country villas. Rome, though it had lost its position as the
administrative capital of the empire, remained to the sixth century
the centre of aristocratic society, and continued to attract newly
ennobled senators. There was, however, a counter-attraction in the
court, wherever it might happen to be. Politicall}_' ambitious
senators gravitated to the emperors, and when the setth;d
down at Milan and then at Ravenna, these two Cities became m
turn centres of senatorial society. In the East there was no such
conflict of loyalties. Constantinople was from the first both the
seat of the senate and the normal residence of the emperors, and
combined the roles of political and social capital.
70
It is clear, however, that already in the early fourth
indeed long before that-many senators had standing leave. to
reside in the provinces. This is demonstrated by the laws
the praescriptio fori enjoyed by senators, and by t):lose dealmg
with the gleba, the aurum oblaticium, and the quaestonan and prae-
torian games. Constantine addressed a law to \)ct.avian, comes
1-Iispaniarum, ruling that senators accused of cr1mmal charges
should be tried by the governor of the province, and enacted that
senators under twenty years age, living in the provinces overseas,
should be excused the fine imposed on those who failed to
themselves for their games. Many later laws allude to provmc1al
senators. Constantius II in 3 57 speaks of 'those possessed of the
title of clarissimus throughout Achaea, Macedonia and the whole of
Illyricum who cunningly avoid the senate house of Rome and
rarely if ever visit the home of their dignity'. Honorius in 395
ordered that senators resident in Rome should pay their aurum
oblaticium in the city, but that the censuales should collect the sums
due from those who had permanent domicile i?

In the fifth century there were in the West illustnous families
domiciled in the provinces. The anti-Donatist law of 4I2 imposed
a scale of fines on recusants ranging down from 5o lb. gold on
illustres: but there were perhaps few senators of so high a rank in
Africa, for a second penal law issued two begins. wit.h
spectabiles. In Gaul the correspondence of S1domus Apollinarts
reveals the existence of a number of great families whose members
held iltustrious in .Gaul itself, rarely if
visited Rome. S1donms h1mself patd only two v1s1ts to the cap1tal,
once in the train of the Gallic empert>r A vitus, and again as
delegate of his native city to Anthemius: it was on this second
occasion that by a timely panegyric on the new emperor he secured
the prefecture of the city and thus achieved the illustrious rank
which his forbears had held. 72
But it was naturally on the whole the senators of lesser degree
who preferred to live in their home towns in the provinces. In
the East the laws strongly imply this distinction. A law of 436
ordered senators of curial descent, if spectabi!es, to perform their
obligations to their cities in person, but allowed those of honorary
illustrious rank, though financially liable, to serve through deputies.
Another law of about the same date licensed all c!arissimi and
spectabi!es to go to their homes or anywhere else and to reside
":'here they wished with?ut obtaining formal leave. The implica-
t!on of both the.se laws is that were in principle bound to
hve at Constantillople and had to obtain special leave if they did
not, the two lower grades n'?rmally lived in the provinces.
Jl;1aroan s on the praetors.hip, o_ne of which gave exemp-
t!On to c!arzsszmz and spectabi!es resident ill the provinces, and the
other confined. it to senators living in the capital, are based on the
same assumption. Nevertheless laws of Zeno and Anastasius
speak of who normally lived in the provinces. 73
There were vast contrasts in wealth between the richest members
of the senatorial and the poorest. Many senators at Rome,
we are told by Olympwdorus, drew from their estates incomes of
400? lb. gold, and in cor_n, wine and other produce in kind the
eqmvalent of about a third as much again. Those of medium
wealth (among whom he classes Symmachus) enjoyed revenues of
1 1oo or rooo lb. go.ld. Melania, who according to her contemporary
biography had an mcome of about 12o,ooo solidi, or over r6oo lb.
gold, would also .have belonged to the middle range of senatorial
.. evidence we have suggests that there were no such
milltonatres ill the senate of Constantinople. John Lydus tells a
story of two Constantinopolitan senators of his own day both of
the highest rank. Zenodotus, it is true had held only an honorary
consulship, which by a law of Zeno roo lb. gold. But Paul
was the son. of Vibianus, prefect of the East in 4 5 9-6o
and m 463, and had himseif celebrated his consulship, in
498, with unexampled splendour. Paul got into financial
difficulties and borr?wed heavily from Zenodotus. Zenodotus,
unable to .recover his money, appealed to Anastasius. The em-
peror, seeillg that Paul would be ruined if he were made to
THE WEALTH OF SENATORS 555
pay and Zenodotus if he abandoned his claim, gave 2ooo lb. gold
to Paul, half to repay Zenodotus, and half to P';t him on his
feet again. It would appear that a senator of the rank at
Constantinople was worth in capital about the annual mcome of
a senator of medium grade at Rome.
74
The sums expended by senators on games at the two capitals
give the same impression. The figure demanded from a
Constanrinopolitan rooo lb. silver or 70 lb. gold,
is a bagatelle compared With zooo lb. which Symmachus
spent on his son's praetorship. At Constanttnople the co_nsular
games cost no more but although the greater part of the bill was
defrayed by the tre;sury: senators not be found willing to
support the expenses of the consulship.
The explanation of co.ntrast the Roman and Con-
stantinopolitan senates lies ill thetr The great Roman
families had begun to accumulate their as far. back as the
second and third centuries B.C. Old families had died out, but
their wealth had generally passed adoption or bequest .. or
through an heiress to senatortal The new famihes
which came in were usually rtch, and their fortunes were added to
the pool. By judicious marri:"ges great
from rich senators who died childless the surv!Vmg.
generation after generation, concentrated more we.alth mto their
hands, and by the fourth century, after five or t;J-ore of
accumulation, had built up the vast fortunes which Olympiodorus
describes. Constantinopolitan senators started for the most part
with ordinary middle-class forttmes in the fourth c.entury, and
though many of them enriched themselves m course
of their official careers they could not hope to thetr Roman
colleagues. At too concentratwn of
grew by the extinct10n of some families and the passage of
estates through heiresses or by will to others, but even by sixth
century this process had not such vast of
wealth as were found at Rome. With a start of five centurtes or
more the great Roman families had too big a lead to be overtaken
in two hundred years. .
Many of the new entrants to .the order .men of considerable
inherited wealth leading decurwns of great c1t1es. Many had made
comfortable for;unes by successful practice at the bar or as fam<;ms
teachers of rhetoric. More had enriched themselves by extortion
and corruption in the official posts which they held. But in the
lowest grades of the senatorial order, as it expanded more and m<;> re
widely, there were r:'-en of quite means. The protest. which
the Constantinopohtan senate ra1sed m 393 about the fo!lzs does
D
I
I,
J
SENATORS AND HONORATJ
not in itself prove much, but Theodosius' response, in creating a
fourth class of senators who paid only seven solidi a year and giving
those unwilling to pay even this trifling sum the option of re-
nouncing their rank, suggests that the senate by this date did really
include quite poor members. For seven solidi a year was the
equivalent of the upkeep of two or three slaves, and even Libanius'
miserably underpaid assistants could afford so meagre a domestic
staff.
76

Such poor senators might include military officers, especially
those who had risen from the ranks: Libanius mentions one who
after long service rose to be a dux, but on retirement possessed only
one farm and eleven slaves. They no doubt also included humbler
decurions who to escape the brutality of provincial governors
secured codicils which they really could not afford. A law of413
mentions technicians who might be awarded a comitiva primi
ordinis in recognition of their services in connection with public
works, and suggests that they might well refuse the honour, in
view of the dues to which senators were liable-and also the
obligation to attend provincial assemblies and the senate itself.
Another class of relatively poor senators were retired palatine
civil servants. The fact that most were excused the fol!is, even the
minimum payment of seven solidi, may be evidence of the pressure
they could bring on the government rather than of their poverty.
But other evidence suggests that most retired with no more than
a comfortable competence. It is significant that in 428 the chief
clerks of the largitiones and res privata, who had not managed to
secure exemption from the gleba, renounced the senatorial rank
which had been accorded to them a few years earlier rather than
pay the tax. 77
From Melania, whose vast estates were scattered over Italy,
Sicily, Africa and Spain, to Theocles of Cyrrhus, whose single
farm barely supported him, senators derived their incomes in the
main from land. This is shown by the character of the senatorial
tax, the gleba. Gratian, it is true, enacted that even senators who
had no possessions at all were liable to what was then the minimum
rate of two folies. But such landless senators must have been very
exceptional cases. The gleba was in essence a land tax, and the first
duty of a newly appointed senator was to make a full return of his
estates for purposes of assessment. The privileges which senators
enjoyed in connecti<?n with extraordinary levies, sordida munera,
and the levy of recrmts, all imply that they were landowners. The
institution of defensores senatus points the same way. The senate of
Constantinople was empowered by Constantius II to elect official
representatives who should in each province maintain the privileged
l
'
OTJUM SENATORIS 5 57
status of its members' land against the encroachments of provincial
governors and city councils.
78
Senators could of course add to their incomes in a variety of
ways. There is only one all':sion their sinking. t<;> commerce, a
law of Honorius which forbrds this unseemly act1v1ty to those of
noble ancestry or distinguished official rank. The liberal professions
were open to them, and they not uncommonly practised at the bar.
But the typical and pr!r:cipal activity of senators. was the
service, and some ambitious senators added considerably to the1r
wealth in this way. The lower offices, those of the grades of
clarissimus and spectabilis, were, it is true, very poorly remunerated,
and even the salaries of the highest cannot have meant much to
the richer members of the order: the roo lb. gold a year which the
praetorian prefect of Africa earned under Justinian can have been
no great attraction to men with unearned incomes of r,ooo lb. gold
or more. But offices could be made to yield very much more than
their official salaries, and even if the lower offices became in time
so expensive to buy that the margin of profit 'Yas greatly reduced,
the higher offices could, to those whose consciences were not too
tender, be the means of achieving great wealth.
Apart from the actual tenure offices sen.ators who
the comitatus had great opporturuties of making money. Those m
the inner circle who had, or were reputed to have, the emperor's
ear, could and did charge large sums for their suffragia. They also
could and did solicit the emperor for gifts of money and land, and
seem to have made a regular income by such petitions. Certainly
in one way or another many relatively poor men Rufinus or
Tatian, Marinus the Syrian or John the Cappadocian, ended an
active official career as millionaires. Nor did wealthy nobles
neglect such opportunities of increasing Ammiar:us
strongly hints that Petronius Probus explmted his four praetonan
prefectures to add to his vast inherited wealth and names among
those who under Constantius II chiefly profited from grants of
confiscated estates not only Eusebius, the chief eunuch, and Ar-
betio the tanker master of the soldiers, but V ulcatius Rufinus, the
nobly born praetorian prefect of Italy, and above all 'the Anicii,
whose later generations outrivalled their ancestors, never sated
with their growing possessions'.
79
'
By no means all senators, however, pursued an active official
career. In the humbler ranks of the order there were many who
having secured their honorary codicils or held a single office were
content to live in their home towns with the proud title of clarissimus
or spectabilis, and many who, having inherited senatorial rank, had
no ambition to lobby for a provincial governorship. Among the
higher nobility also it was probably a minority who took an active
part in the government of the empire. There was among the old
families of Rome a certain tradition of public service, but many
great nobles held only the minimum number of posts to achieve
the illustrious rank which they regarded as due to family pride.
Symmachus, who as corrector of Lucania, proconsul of Africa and
prefect of the city, devoted about three years of his life to the public
service, is typical of many fourth century Roman nobles. 80
In the fifth century members of the aristocratic houses disdained
the lower offices, and expected to hold illustrious posts only. Rufius
Praetextatus Postumianus, after service in the fashionable corps of
the notaries, became straightway prefect of the city, an office which
he held twice. Anicius Acilius Glabrio Faustus, after being comes
of the consistory, likewise jumped straight to the prefecture of the
city, which he held three times, followed by two praetorian
prefectures: but despite his many tenures he probably did not spend
much over half a dozen years in office. Petronius Maximus, after
brief service as tribune and notary, was comes sacrarum largitionum
for three years, and prefect of the city for eighteen months, all
before he was twenty-five. He was later again urban prefect and
praetorian prefect of Italy twice; but he was a very ambitious man
who, as Sidonius Apollinaris remarks, 'had boldly climbed the
peak of prefecture, patriciate and consulate, and unsated had
redoubled the magistracies which he held', even before he aspired
to the purple. Sidonius himself, a member of a great Gallic family,
was even more inactive than his Roman colleagues; he held one
office only, the urban prefecture, and that by a lucky chance.81
There were great aristocrats who, sure of holding the ordinary
consulate, to which they were sometimes promoted in their youth,
disdained to hold even illustrious offices. Nummius Albinus,
consul in 34 5, was never anything but comes ordinis primi. Of this
we can be certainfrom the record of his career put up by his son.
In other cases definite proof is lacking, but the consular fasti
include, besides members of the imperial family, praetorian and
urban prefects, and magistri militum, the names of men who are not
recorded to have held any high office. Some are mere names to us,
others are known to have belonged to one of the great families,
like Anicius Hermogenianus Olybrius and Symmachus, the
grandson of the orator, consuls in 395 and 446. They may perhaps
have held a brief prefecture of which no records survive, but more
probably they thought even the highest office beneath them. 82
OTIUM SENATORIS
5 59
In the East the picture is less clear, since inscriptions recording
careers are lacking. Even in the fourth century there were imperial
favourites like Optatus or Datianus who were accorded the patri-
ciate and the ordinary consulship, but are never recorded to have
held any office. Many members of the new nobility of the fifth
centuries seem like their Western colleagues to have confined
themselves to a few illustrious offices, and some to have held none
at all. Most of the senatorial commissioners at the Council of
Chalcedon had held some illustrious office, but Senator, consul in
43 5, is recorded in the minutes as 'the most glorious ex-consul and
patrician'. The consular jasti record as many Eastern as Western
consuls who are not known to us to have held any office, and not a
few of these doubtless, like Senator, actually held none.
Such great nobles, who held no offices of state, were not neces-
sarily idle men. Senator not only served on the imperial com-
mission which guided the debates of the Council of Chalcedon, but
undertook the more arduous task of going as ambassador to Attila.
He was, as Theodoret' s letters to him indicate, an active member of
the comitatus, whose support it was worth while to enlist. But many
great aristocrats, especially in the West, seem to have taken no
interest in public affairs. They lived that life of leisured ease
(otium) which was acknowledged as the birthright of a senator.
83
Ammianus Marcellinus makes a savage attack on the Roman
aristocracy of his day. He castigates their ostentatious luxury-
their palatial mansions, their huge staffs of pampered slaves, their
towering carriages, their extravagant clothes, and their gargantuan
banquets, where enormous fish and birds were solemnly weighed
at table, and their weights recorded by attendant notaries. He is
even more severe on their idleness and frivolity. They regard a
journey to one of thejr more distant estates as a major expedition,
they care for nothing except the races, dancing girls and ganling.
Their libraries are locked like mausolea, and the only literature
they read is the satires of Juvenal and the scandalous biographies of
Marius Maximus.
8
4
There is no doubt some truth in these strictures. Great senators
certainly lived on a princely scale. The biographer of Melauia
waxes lyrical about the huge stocks of silken and embroidered
garments and of silver plate which she and Pinianus distributed to
the churches when they adopted the ascetic life. Symmachus
mentions in his correspondence, besides three houses in Rome,
fifteen villas which he possessed in various parts of Italy. The
staffs to maintain all these mansions with their parks and gardens
must have run to many hundreds, if not thousands as John Chry-
sostom alleges.
85
Not even Serena, the niece of Theodosius the Great and wife of
Stilicho, could afford to buy Pinianus' huge town house with its
wealth of precious marbles. Near Enna in Sicily have been
revealed the ruins of a country house which may well have belonged
to the Symmachi, who are known to have sometimes resided in the
territory of Enna. The house was built at the beginning of the
fourth century, and remained in use down to the sixth century and
later. Most of its thirty-odd rooms are grouped around a spacious
colonnaded court, 120 by 100 feet, and a great corridor, 200 feet
long and 16 feet wide, which runs parallel with the eastern side of
the court. To the north-western corner of the court is attached a
sumptuous suite of baths, with an octagonal tepidarium flanked by
eight apsidal rooms. Off the eastern side of the great corridor opens
a huge dining or reception room, 40 feet wide and 8o feet long,
ending in a wide apse. To the south of the main court is another
smaller oval colonnaded court, on to which opens on the east
another great reception room, a square 70 feet either way, flanked
by three apsidal exedrae.
The splendid floor mosaics illustrate the tastes and interests of
the owners. There are themes drawn from Greek mythology,
including the Labours of Hercules, Orpheus charming the beasts,
and the story of Lycurgus and Ambrosia. There are scenes of
hunting and fishing and country life. The vestibule of the baths is
adorned with a huge picture, 70 feet long, of a chariot race in the
Circus Maximus, and the great corridor with a giant composition
showing wild beasts being hunted and trapped and put aboard
ships for transport to the Roman arena.s6
Ammianus seems to have been too sweeping in his charge of
frivolity. The picture of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome in the
late fourth century which emerges from Symmachus' letters is
very different from Ammianus' caricature, and so is that of the
Gallic aristocracy in the following century which Sidonius Apol-
linaris draws. Neither Symmachus nor Sidonius, it is true, nor the
majority of their friends, led very active or useful lives. Though he
lived through stirring times, Valentinian's German wars and the
revolt of Firmus, the battle of Adrianople and the desperate
struggle with the Goths, the rebellions of Maximus and Eugenius
and the final victory of Theodosius the Great, the revolt of Gildo
and the invasion of Italy itself by Radagaesus and by Alaric-
Symmachus scarcely mentions public affairs save in so far as they
impinged directly on his friends, or involved taxes on senators or
endangered the corn supply of Rome.
The one subject on which he shows enthusiasm is the celebration
of his son's quaestorian and praetorian games. <They must not fall
OTIUM SENATORIS
below the standard expected of a great senator, and no expense and
no trouble must be spared. Symmacbus unmercifully pestered his
wide circle of acquaintances with letters asking for their co-
operation. He wrote to the great Stilicho, asking for leave to use
the amphitheatre to accommodate the large audiences which he
anticipated; to distribute presents of silk garments-recently
forbidden as an unnecessary extravagance-and to give an aquatic
theatrical display-probably a maiuma, again recently prohibited on
moral grounds. He wrote to numerous friends who had estates and
studs in Spain, asking them to assist his agents in buying the best
Spanish race horses available. He secured warrants from the
praetorian prefects for his agents to travel and to transport the
horses by the public post. He asked proconsuls and vicars of
Africa for antelopes and other wild beasts of the desert, and also for
hunters to fight them in the arena. He had bears brought from
Dalmatia; he managed to secure crocodiles, which he considered
essential for a theatrical entertainment; he gratefully acknowledged
a gift of seven Irish hounds from Flavian, the praetorian prefect;
he thanked the emperor for a present of leopards. He asked his
son-in-law, Nicomachus Flavianus, then prefect of the city, to
send officials to Campania to round up a party of charioteers and
actors last reported to have set sail from Sicily. Gladiators also
figured on his programme: he had been promised some Saxon
prisoners by the emperor, but when twenty-nine of them commit-
ted suicide before delivery, he abandoned his claim on this 'gang
more villainous than Spartacus' and fell back on recruiting volun-
teers in the ordinary way.s7
Sidonius' letters are more interesting, for he has a gift for
narration, and draws vivid pictures of his dinner with the Emperor
Majorian,and of the Visigothic court. But one would hardly guess
from his letters-at any rate before he became a bishop-that the
empire was fighting a desperate battle against the encroachments
of the barbarians in Gaul.
Both Symmachus and Sidonius may in a sense be called
frivolous. They passed their time in hunting, in reading, in
corresponding with their large circle of friends and acquaintances
and occasionally in writing belles lettres. But they were not vulgar
pleasure seekers; they were men of culture, if not great scholars or
profound thinkers. Not that such were lacking among the nobility.
The group of great aristocrats depicted in Macrobius' Saturnalia are
men of scholarly tastes, deeply read in classical literature and
repositories of a vast pedantic erudition. Many of the Anicii of the
fifth and sixth centuries were serious scholars who edited classical
texts, and one of them, Boethius, the great philosopher of his age.
Another great senator of less distinguished lineage, Cassiodorus,
was justly famed for his encyclopaedic learning. The Roman
senatorial nobility played their part in maintaining classical
culture in an age of growing barbarism, but one may wonder if they
thereby adequately compensated the empire for the huge proportion
of its wealth which they absorbed. 88
CHAPTER XVI
THE CIVIL 'SERVICE
T
HE later Roman empire was before all things a bureaucratic
state. Civil servants played a vital role in all departments of
government, in the drafting and circulation of laws and
ordinances and the administration of justice, in the recruitment and
supply of the armies, and above all in the operation of the vast
and complicated fiscal machine. They issued writs, executed
judgments and kept and filed the records of the courts. They
drafted answers to petitions on every kind of question. They issued
commissions to officers, enrolled recruits, regulated the distribu-
tion of rations, uniforms, arms and horses. They prepared the
estimates of expenditure and computed the rates of taxation,
maintained the registers of tax assessments, checked the payment of
the revenue and demanded, and often exacted, arrears. Without its
civil servants the whole complicated machine of government
which held the vast empire together would have collapsed.
The civil service, like most other institutions of the later empire,
had its root in the Principate. Under the Principate there were two
basically different types of oj}icium in the empire. Those offices
which developed out of the emperor's personal household, that is,
besides the domestic staff of the palace, the finance ministries and
the central secretariats, and the financial staffs of the procurators in
the provinces, were filled by imperial slaves and freedmen. On the
other hand the praetorian and the urban prefects and proconsuls
and legates were served by soldiers seconded from units under
their command, or, if they had no troops under them, from the
armies of neighbouring provinces. The standard ojjicium of a legate
comprised a centurion as princeps ojjicii, six senior non-commis-
sioned officers (three cornicu!arii and three commentarienses), twenty
specu!atores and sixty benejiciarii, besides stratores and sundry minor
grades, and a bodyguard of equites and pedites singu!ares. Proconsuls
seem to have had similar staffs. Procurators also possessed, besides
their servile financial staff, military ojjicia to assist them in their
judicial work; these were on a much more modest scale. The
j6J
l
/I
THE CIVIL SERVICE
praetorian prefect naturally had a larger officium, but it too was
organised on the same lines.
During the second and third centuries the slave and freedmen
staff became largely hereditary. The fiscus did not normally buy
slaves, but employed its vernae, the sons of its slaves; manumission
of imperial slaves, though a regular practice, seems usually to
have been postponed till they had produced sons who, having been
born in servitude, remained imperial property until they in turn
were manumitted. The military officia tended at the same time to
become increasingly divorced from the fighting troops. A soldier,
once seconded for clerical duties, normally remained a clerk, and by
the third century we find men who served in clerical posts from
their recruitment.
By the latter part of the third century certain changes had taken
place. In the central offices manned by freedmen and slaves an
increasing number of senior posts were given to men of equestrian
rank. The head of each ministry had since the early second
century normally been an equestrian, but his chief assistant and
others of yet lower grade often were so now. C. Caelius Saturninus
in Diocletian's reign began his official career as an assistant
(adiutor) in the department of studia at 6o,ooo sesterces, the lowest
equestrian salary scale, was then transferred at the same salary to
the department of sacra consilia, was promoted in this branch to
zoo,ooo sesterces, and then became successively magister libellorum
(probably at 30o,ooo) and magister studiorum. In the second place,
to deal with the new financial duties in connection with requisitions,
the praetorian prefect built up a staff of military accountants
(tabularii and scriniarii) in addition to his judicial staff of cornicularii,
commentarienses and so forth, and legates (and no doubt proconsuls)
also acquired an officium rationum. Finally the frequent doubling
of the posts of procurator and legate or proconsul must have
resulted in the amalgamation of the procurator's staff, with its
small military ojjicium of judicial clerks, and its larger slave and
freedman familia of accountants, with that of the legate or pro-
consul, with its large judicial and rudimentary financial staff of
military clerks. I
Diocletian appears to have standardised and simplified the
officia without radically altering their structure and personnel.
Imperial freedmen must still have been an important element
in the civil service at the end of the reign, for the first edict against
the Christians prescribed a special penalty, enslavement, for a class
described in Eusebius' Greek by a phrase ( oi iv ol"edau;) which
may be a translation of 'qui in familiis (Caesaris) sunt', and seems
to correspond to the Caesariani of Valerian's edict against the
THE ORIGINS OF THE SERVICE 565
Christians. Later evidence suggests that not only the domestic
staff of the palace, but the junior clerks in the central finance
departments. were still slayes. ru:d freedmen. The staffs of the
diocesan rattonales and magtsfrt, hke those of the old procurators,
on which they were probably modelled, comprised
grades (benejiciarii and stratores are b;rt mal!lly
of Caesariani. Praesides seem also to have mhented some Caesartant
from the staffs of the provincial procurators whom they superseded;
Eusebius mentions one Theodulus who belonged to the familia
praesidi.'CI!is of the governor of Palestine (nj'q r)yq.wvtxfiq rvyxavwv
olxe-rtat;).
2
In the military ojjicia casual allusions in the laws and the authors,
as well as papyri and inscriptions, show that the old second-century
grades of princeps, cornicularius, commentariensis, speculatores and
bencficiarii survived in the fourth century, as did min.or
as stratores and singulares, and the more recent financ1al tabulartt and
scriniarii. The Notitia Dignitatum shows a remarkably uniform
structure for the officia of the praetorian and urban prefects, the
vicarii, and all grades of provincial governor, the origins of which
may well go back to Diocletian. After eliminating later accretions
the following scheme can be reconstructed. Each officium was
divided into three branches, the judicial, the financial and the sub-
clerical grades-orderlies, ushers, messengers and the like. The
judicial side consi.sted ?f the princeps (who of the whole
officium), one cornzcu!artus and one commentarzensts, a_nd
and benejiciarii. These latter grades are subsumed m the Notltla
under the term exceptores, shorthand writers, a title which in the sec-
ond century was given only to the personal assistants of the
principal officials, but had by Constantine's reign become. general
for all inferior judicial clerks. The financial side consisted of
tabu!arii with a staff of inferior clerks, scriniarii. These were
military grades in the fourth century, and had apparently absorbed
the slave and freedman accountants who still survived under
Diocletian. Perhaps for that reason, and perhaps because the
military grades were themselves of comparatively recent origin, the
financial branch was regarded as inferior to the judicial, and its
members were sometimes, even in the fourth century, deprived of
their military status and made liable to torture.
Such was a typical provincial officium. The ojjicia of vicars and
prefects were naturally more elaborate. In the Notitia these have,
in addition to the above-named officials, curae epistolarum. The
praetorian prefect had several of these, one for each diocese which
he controlled; they handled financial correspondence with the
vicars, but belonged to the judicial branch, not being accountants
566 THE CIVIL SERVICE
but letter writers; the vicars presumably had one each. The
praetorian prefects in. the Notitia also have regendarii, who con-
trolled the post. N e1ther of these offices is attested before the
but the. former at any rate probably goes back to the
creation of th_e d.wceses by Diocletian. Duces had o.fficia similar to
those of pr<?vmc:al goyer?'ors, but with no cornicularius.a
Already m Dwcletian s reign most civil servants ranked as
soldiers, and to have completed the process
by grant. of military pnvileges and status to the palatine offices
which had hitherto .been staffed with imperial slaves and freedmen.
Here the only. from the old regime, if indeed it was one,
was the. . of the domestic servants of the palace
(castrenstant) and the Jumor clerks and technicians of the two
finance and privatiani). They held neither
nor military tltles, but were graded as primae, secundae
and !erttae for'!'ae: these were perhaps the classifications of the old
servile estabhshments. The title Caesariani also survived to
designate the officials of the rationales who replaced the old pro-
curators.4
As a soldier a civil servant drew rations (annona) and, if he was
graded as a trooper,. fodder (capitus); these allowances were only
for m the early fifth century. He was also issued
w1th (vestu), and W?re as l:is badge o.f office the military
belt (ctngulum). He was enlisted, hke a sold1er, by a probatoria
and was entered on strength of some fictive regiment. The
clerks of the praetonan prefecture of the East were still in Jus-
tinian's day enrolled in Legio I Adiutrix and the officials of
provincial governors, the cohorta!es, were 'presumably so called
because they were entered on the books of some cohort. Civil
in many held military non-commissioned grades,
from the prmClpate, long obsolete in the army of the day,
nsmg be cornicularius and centurio princeps, and finally
OJ?- P;tmtpilus; princeps of the praetorian prefecture
still m s day earned his centurion's baton.s
All this howev(':r little in practice. A sharp distinction
was drawn between serv1ce m the real army (militia armata) and in
a g'?vernment (militia o.fficialis). Civil servants were not
soldiers, and on retlrement did not rank as veterans but received
their own specific gratuities and privileges. '
The most favoured offices were naturally those of the comitatus.
Among these may first be mentioned a highly peculiar group, the
THE SACRED BEDCHAMBER
cubicularii of the sacred bedchamber of the emperor and empress.
These were eunuchs, and, as such, almost necessarily imported
barbarian slaves. We know of only two Roman citizens who served
as cubicularii. The pretender Magnus Maximus broke with tradition
and appointed as his first praepositus sacri cubiculi an elderly man
of free birth. The experiment was shortlived: a year or two later
a eunuch once again occupied the post. A certain Mamas from the
village of Zomeri in the territory of Sebasteia, the metropolis of the
province of Armenia I, had an accident in youth and had to be
castrated for medical reasons. He took advantage of his disability to
enrol himself as a cubicu!arius under Anastasius, and rose to be
praepositus. The majority of the cubicularii came from Persia,
Armenia or other Caucasian lands; under Justinian the main
source of supply was the barbarous kingdom of the Abasgi. They
were usually bought from dealers, but might come by gift from
great nobles, who also had their staffs of eunuchs. By a law of Leo
they were declared free persons on entering the imperial service.
6
The organisation of the cubicu!um varied from time to time.
Sometimes there was a single establishment, sometimes the emperor
and the empress, or other ladies of the imperial family, had their
separate bedchambers; in those of the imperial ladies there were
women of the bedchamber (cubiculariae ), also of servile origin, as
well as eunuchs. There were various posts in the bedchamber, or
the several bedchambers, which were held by the cubicularii.
Among the less important was the keeper of the wardrobe (comes
sacrae vestis), first recorded in 412. The post of manager of the
imperial estates in Cappadocia, which supplied the income of the
bedchamber in the East (comes domorum per Cappadociam), was also
filled from about 400 by a eunuch. More important were the
captain of the bodyguard (spatharius), known from the. time of
Theodosius II, and the keeper of the privy purse (sacellarius), who
first appears under Zeno. An older post was that of majordomo of
the palace (castrensis), which is recorded as earl as the reign of
Constantius II. He is the only eunuch officer o whom a detailed
account survives in our copy of the Notitia Dignitatnm. He had
under him two accountants (tabularii), one for the emperor's and one
for the empress's expenses, an assistant (adiutor) and a secretary
(chartularius) with a scrinium of clerks. Next above him ranked
the senior eunuch (primicerius sacri cubiculi) and above him the
superintendent of the sacred bedchamber (praepositus sacri cubiculi).
The praepositus was selected by the emperor (or empress) and
served during his (or her) pleasure; some enjoyed long terms of
office. The spatharius and the sacellarius seem also to have held
office during the emperor's pleasure; Chrysaphius was spatharius
THE CIVIL SERVICE
for a long period and Narses was sacellarius for seven or eight
years at least. The posts of comes domorum, castrensis and primicerius,
on the other hand, went by seniority and were held for a fixed term,
two years in Justinian's reign.7
Owing to the secluded state in which the emperor by tradition
lived, his eunuchs, who alone had regular and familiar intercourse
with him and controlled private and informal access to him by
outsiders, at all times enjoyed considerable influence, and in some
reigns were all-powerful. Constantius II was reported to be
entirely in the hands of his eunuchs, and in particular of his
notorius praepositus, Eusebius. The praepositus Eutropius was for
a brief period the virtual head of the government in the reign of
Arcadius and in the latter years of Theodosius II the spatharius
Chrysaphius controlled affairs. But apart from such exceptional
cases, where a strongminded eunuch dominated a weak emperor,
the ordinary run of cubicularii had many opportunities of making
their influence felt. Eutherius, Julian's praepositus, served as his
envoy to Constantius, and endeavoured, vainly in the event, to
reconcile the Augustus 'to his presumptuous Caesar. The fate of
Ambrose's mission to Maximus seems to have been decided by the
latter's praepositus, the eunuch Gallicanus, who refused him a private
interview with the emperor, and insisted that he be received at a
public consistory. Bishop Porphyrius was able to obtain an imperial
order to close the temples of a ~ a by securing the interest of the
empress Eudoxia through the good offices of her castrensis
Amantius, and Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, spent vast sums on
winning the support of the praepositi and other eunuchs and ladies
ofthe bedchamber of Theodosius II and Pulcheria. Cubicularii were
also sometimes used for confidential missions in the provinces.
Arsacius, a eunuch, accompanied the new prefect of Egypt, Phila-
grius, who was charged with installing Gregory as bishop of
Alexandria in 340. In 343 Hesychius the castrensis was one of the
two imperial commissioners sent with the Eastern group of bishops
to the council of Sardica. s
Such influence naturally meant wealth. All who wished for a
private audience with the emperor had to obtain it through the
cubicularii, and gold often unlocked the door. Anyone who desired
some favour would find it advisable to conciliate the goodwill of
the eunuchs, and this was often obtainable for money. A powerful
praepositus could virtually sell the great offices of state by auction.
In the ordinary way it became customary, it would seem, for all
recipients of offices to tip the staff of the bedchamber for forwarding
their applications. Justinian, when he suppressed the sale of offices
authorised certain customary fees and amongst these were p a y ~
ments 'to the three chartularies of the sacred bedchamber', perhaps
the secretaries of the praepositus, primicerius and castrensis, ranging
from sixty-three solidi for appointment as comes Orientis, to nine for
a provincial governorship.
The cubicu!arii had also unrivalled opportunities for petitioning
for escheated or confiscated estates. Eusebius the praepositus is
singled out by Ammianus as one of the leaders of the sinister group
who played on Constantius II' s fears of conspiracy and secured the
estates of those who were victims of his suspicions. But apart from
such exceptional cases cubicularii seem to have made a regular
practice of petition. When Theodosius II enacted that petitioners
must go halves with the treasury, this rule was soon relaxed in their
case.
9
Some great praepositi, such as Eutropius, acquired gigantic
fortunes. Antiochus and Calapodius, praepositi of Theodosius II
and Leo, seem to have left their estates to the Great Church of
Constantinople. In the sixth century the management of their
patrimonies required two scrinia, each manned by six clerks;
fifty-four clerks sufficed to manage all the other lands of the church
throughout Thrace, Asiana, Pontica and Oriens. The laws
indicate that ordinary cubicu!arii normally retired as wealthy
landowners. A constitution of Theodosius II enacts that the
estates of all retired cubicu!arii should be exempt from sordida
munera, and their houses, whether in the capital or in other cities,
immune from billeting, even though they had retired before
reaching the highest offices of primicerius, castrensis or comes
domorum. John of Ephesus tells the story of a very pious eunuch
named Theodore, who may be presumed not to have exploited his
position unduly, and retired prematurely as castrensis owing to ill
health. He was so lavish in his charitable gifts to the poor that
within a year he had dissipated his entire fortune in gold, which
amounted to I5 to 20 centenaria (about I2j,ooo solidi). In the next
two years he disposed of all his silver plate and clothes, and freed
all his slaves. He was thus reduced to beggary, but Justinian
allocated him a pension of I ,ooo solidi a year. The scale of the
pension, which exceeds the salary of a provincial governor of
spectabilis grade, is some indication of the standard ofliving enjoyed
by cubicularii.
10
The standing of the cubicu!arii is also reflected in the official
rank which they acquired. The praepositus was in 422 raised to
parity with the praetorian and urban prefects and the magistri
militum: in the Notitia he is already illustris. The primicerius and
castrensis rank as spectabi!es in the Notitia and this dignity was later
acquired by the lower officers, including the chartularies. Eunuchs
THE CIVIL SERVICE
who reached the senior offices thus ranked as senators on retirement
in the fifth century, and even when effective membership of the
senate was restricted to illustres, retired praepositi, as laws of Zeno
and Anastasius show, still became senators.U
It was a strange anomaly that barbarian slaves should become
senators, and there was in the fourth century, in the West at any
rate, a strong prejudice among the aristocracy against the cubicularii,
who were habitually accused of unbounded avarice, and of un-
scrupulously making money by accepting bribes from those who
desired access to the emperor, and, what was worse, of poisoning
the emperor's mind with charges of treason against innocent men.
Ammianus makes an elaborate apology for praising the one vir-
tuous eunuch of whom he knew. 'The incident suggests that I
should say a few words about this Eutherius, which will perhaps
not be believed: for if Numa Pompilius or Socrates said any good
thing about a eunuch, and swore to it on oath, they would be
accused of straying from the truth.' Eutherius, he tells, was born
of free status in Armenia, captured as a child by neighbouring
enemies, castrated and sold to Roman merchants, who brought
him to Constantine' s palace. He educated himself as best he
could, and displayed remarkable judgment and loyalty. Transferred
to the service of Constans, he exercised his influence, but in vain,
to keep him on the right track. Promoted to be Julian's praepositus,
he had a healthily sobering influence on the enthusiastic young
Caesar. He finally retired to Rome, where he long lived respected
and liked by all ranks of society. Most cubicularii, Ammianus
declares, retired into obscurity with their ill-gotten gains.12
Whether they deserved the opprobium in which they were held
it is hard to say: no doubt the real objection to them was that
they were upstarts to whom men of birth and breeding had to
defer in order to obtain what they considered to be their tights.
Eutropius caused passionate indignation, in the West at any rate, by
his ostentatious exhibition of his power, and above all by holding
the consulate. This was too much for public opinion even in the
East, it would seem, and he was the first and last eunuch consul
ordinarius. In the fifth century, when the senior eunuchs regularly
held the rank of senators, prejudice seems to have waned, and by
Justinian's reign the extraordinary career of Narses, who, as
sacellarius and later praepositus, commanded armies and finally
became commander in chief and governor general of Italy, excited
no adverse comment. He is one of the very few public men of
Justinian's reign at whom Procopius throws no mud in the Secret
History, and in the other historians of the day bears the character
of an honourable man,l3
57!
The menial services of the palace were carried out by a staff
known as paedagogiani, ministeriales, and curae pa!atiorum, or more
commonly, as being in the charge of the castrensis, castrensiani.
They were not eunuchs-laws of Leo and Zeno allude to their
wives. If the chief barber whom Julian summoned was typical,
the senior ranks of the service were well paid-he received twenty
annonae and twenty capitus and a large money salary, apart from
perquisites obtained by petitions. We heat of another, a Persian
named Mercurius, who rose from palace butler to rationalis under
Constantius II, and another castrensianus, Hyperechius, was a friend
of the pretender Procopius and was appointed by him to a military
command. By the early fifth century there was evidently great
pressure to enter the service, for a maximum number of established
posts (statuti) had been fixed, and outside it was a long waiting list
of supernumeraries. The establishment was divided into three
grades-forma prima, secunda and tertia-and promotion was
normally from grade to grade. But the supernumeraries were also
graded, and thus it came about that when a vacancy occurred in the
first grade of the establishment, a supernumerary of the first grade
claimed it, and promotion from the second grade of the establish-
ment was blocked. Theodosius li in 422 ruled that to obviate this
anomaly vacancies in the first class should go alternately to statuti
of the second class and supernumeraries of the first and
similarly for vacancies in the second class. Anyone who tned to
jump the queue by obtaining an established ,POSt without waiting
his time, was to be punished by becoming the junior supernumerary
of the third grade. By the sixth century, if not earlier, many of the
posts must have been sinecures or have involved only part-time
duties. Under Justinian we hear of a banker or money lender
(argentarius) of Constantinople, who enjoyed the office of castren-
sianus of the sacred table. It is probable that by this date posts in
the service were saleable: it is known at any rate that argentarii
made a regular practice of investing their profits in saleable offices
for themselves or their sons.l
4
A more distinguished corps which apparently was part of the
palace staff were the thirty silentiaries and their three decurions,
who served as ushers within the palace at meetings of the consistory.
They are classed in a fourth-century law with the ministeriales
and paedagogiani, and were still in the sixth century under the dis-
position of the praepositus sacri cubiculi: !he cubicularii t.hey
were occasionally used for confidential unss1ons: a decunon,
Eusebius, was sent in 346 to Alexandria by Constantius II to
remove from the files all documents prejudicial to Athanasius. In
the fifth century we still find silentiaries performing important
E
missions, especially in ecclesiastical affairs. John, one of the
decurions, was sent with a letter of Marcian to Alexandria after the
Council of Chalcedon. Eustathius, the primicerius of the silen-
tiaries, was charged by Theodosius II to decide an ecclesiastical
dispute at Ephesus, and Magnus took part in the proceedings
against Eutyches in the same reign.15
By the early fifth century the corps had achieved high official
standing. By a law of 4I 5 decurions on retirement ranked equally
with retired duces, that is as spectabiles, and by 43 7 ordinary silen-
tiaries, who retired after thirteen years' service, became senators.
The privileges which they were accorded at this date suggest that
they were men of property. By the sixth century decurions retired
with the title of master of the offices or comes domesticorum inter
agentes, thus ranking above all honorary illustres, and other
silentiaries became honorary illustres. By this time the corps was
highly fashionable: Gubazes, ex-king of the Lazi, was enrolled
in it, and Paul the silentiary, who wrote the famous description of
the church of St. Sophia, was a man of noble birth and great
wealth.
16
As early as the reign of Anastasius posts were purchased:
in Justinian's reign a serving silentiary might sell the reversion
to his place, and continue to serve and draw his salary, the pur-
chaser ranking as a supernumerary silentiary, without pay, till
the vendor retired. No silentiary rose to great eminence except
Anastasius, who by winning the esteem of the empress Ariadne,
whom he personally served (the empress had four silentiaries
especially attached to her person), rose to be emperor.17
Turning from the domestic staff of the palace to the public
offices of the comitatus, the pride of place was undoubtedly taken
by the notaries, whose function was to serve as the secretariat
of the consistory. Originally they seem to have been quite humble
persons. Libanhts always alludes to them contemptuously as
clerks, men without literary culture, skilled only in shorthand,
and cites cases of men who were sons of sausage makers, cloak-
room attendants and manual workers. But owing to the confi-
dential nature of their work, and their close proximity to the
emperor's person, they rapidly rose in importance. Already under
Const)mtine it was a notary, Marianus, who carried the emperor's
invitation to the bishops assembled at Tyre to celebrate the dedica-
tion of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Under Constantius II
we find them employed on a great variety of important missions,
THE PALATINE MINISTRIES 573
diplomatic, administrative, ecclesiastical and military. In 3 53
Paulus was ser:t to Britain to up of Magnentiu.s,
in 3 54 Pentadms was entrusted w1th the execution of Gallus, 1n
3
55 Hilarius and Diogenius were sent to Alexandria to direct the
installation of George as bishop. In 3 58 two, Spectatus and
Procopius, were successively sent as envoys in two embassies to
Sapor, the Persian king, and another, Gaudentius, was dispatched
to Gaul to keep watch over the newly appointed Caesar, Julian:
he was later sent to Africa to confirm its loyalty when J ulian was
proclaimed Augustus. Decentius was entrusted with the delicate
task of demanding troops from Julian Caesar in 3 59, and con-
ducting them to Constantius II. But, what was worse in the eyes
of gentlemen of the old school like Libanius, several were promoted
to be quaestor, master of the offices, proconsul of Asia and even
praetorian prefect, and some held the supreme honour of the
consulship.
18
Under J ulian, J ovian, Valentinian and V alens we find notaries
performing similar tasks, and receiving similar promotion, but
by this time the social composition of the corps had changed.
As early as 3 58 we find Procopius, a relative of the future emperor
Julian, serving as a notary; he was then 32 years of age and must
have seen about ten years' service. It is significant that Jovian,
the senior notary, was thought of as a possible rival to the emperor
Jovian. In 37I we find Bassianus, son of one praetorian prefect
and son-in-law of another, and in 3 74 Faustinus, nephew of a
third praetorian prefect, serving in the corps, while Theodore,
the second senior notary in nr, receives high ):'raise from Am-
mianus, as a man of the highest culture and educatiOn and moreover
sprung from an ancient noble family of Gaul.1
9
In 3 8 r Gratian and Theodosius I issued laws defining and
probably raising the status of the notaries. By Gratian's law the
primicerius and secundicerius, the first and second on the list by
seniority, ranked equal with proconsuls, the remaining tribunes
and notaries were equated with vicars, and the lower grade of
domestici et notarii with consulars: all were thus senators. Theodo-
sius reserved equality with a proconsul to the primicerius, but
distinguished tribuni praetoriani et notarii from the ordinary tribunes
and notaries, giving them rank equivalent to the comes Orientis or
Aegypti.
20
It is not known how many notaries there were in the earlier
part of the fourth century. Julian, if Libanius is to be believed,
reduced their number to four. By 38I, according to Libanius
again, who is probably thinking of the Eastern parts only, they
numbered 5 20. This suggests that the corps, as it grew more
574
THE CIVIL SERVICE
fashionable, was acquiring many sinecure members. This had
certainly happened in the West by the early fifth century. The poet
Claudian, who was a tribune and notary, is not likely to have done
much serious secretarial duty, nor are the various young nobles of
the high Roman aristocracy who served in the corps, such as
Petronius Maximus, who was tribune and notary at the age of 19,
or Marcellinus, who presided over the Conference of Carthage in
41 r when his brother Apringius was proconsul of Africa. By
the middle of the fifth century there were apparently a large number
of wealthy men who bore the title of tribune and notary in the
Western parts, but only thirty who were in active attendance at
court.
21
The development seems to have been similar in the East.
Praetorian tribunes and notaries are found conducting ecclesiastical
negotiations like Marcellinus in the West. Aristolaus was en-
trusted with a series of missions of this character after the Council
of Ephesus in 43 r, Damascius presided over the trial of Ibas at
the Council of Tyre in 448, and Eulogius, together with Elpidius,
a count of the consistory, was charged with maintaining order at
the Council of Ephesus in 449 But the original clerical duties of
the notaries seem already in 450 to have passed to memoriales or
agentes in rebus, who served as 'secretaries of the divine consistory'.
The number of absentee notaries grew, until Zeno ordered that
'those tribunes who, occupied with their own affairs, have not
troubled to attend at the sacred palace', should be degraded by
one year for each year's absence up to four, and for five or more
years' absence should be struck off the active list, retaining,
however, the title and privileges of tribunes and notaries. Even
so promotion was slow in Justinian's day; according to John
Lydus it took many years for tribunes to reach the end of their
service. As the primicerius under Zeno's law held his post for
two years, and thus each tribune only went up one rung in the
ladder of seniority every other year, progress would have been
slow even if there were only about thirty on the active list. The
post of tribune and notary was by the early sixth century saleable:
the retiring advocati jisci of the praetorian prefect of the East were
entitled to free places for their sons. 22
The primicerius of the notaries was an important official. He
received from 42 5 the honorary codicils of master of the offices on
retirement, with precedence as if he had actually held the post.
He had charge of the laterculum maius, or 'notitia omnium digni
tatum et administrationum tarn civilium quam militarium': that is
to say he maintained the list of all holders of higher offices, and
probably issued their codicils of appointment. From . this he
reaped a rich harvest .of .fees, according to Justinian's schedule
24
solidi from all provmcJal gov:err:ors, from the
proconsul of Asia and comes Ortentts. His assistant (adtufor), who
was chosen from the corps, got more modest sums, 3 solidi in
most cases. In the Eastern parts the primicerius also issued com-
missions to the tribunes of the scholae, the regiments of the field
army, and many of the regiments of, the was a
faterculum minus, under the quaestor s .cJ:Iarge, which were
entered appointments to the old amahary ?f the
fimitanei the cohorts and alae. In the fifth and sJxth centunes the
third (tertiocerius) of the notaries (the secundicerius prob-
ably by this date a prescriptive .right to. the post o_f :zdtutor) also
had special duties w1th the Jssue. of ?nvileges (prag-
maticae). Both the prtmtcmus_ and the terttocmus had staf!s ?[
clerks known from their dutJes as laterculenses and pragmattcartt,
not from the notaries, who were above such menial work,
but from the memoriales and agentes in rebus.
23

From the tribunes and notaries were drawn the referendaries,
who served as the emperor's judicial clerks and messengers. The
office first appears in 42 7 in the East, and existed in t.he estern
empire also, whence it was taken over bJ: t_he Ostrogothic kmg?om.
There were according to Peter the patrJCJan only three established
posts of referendary, two attached to the t;mperor and one to the
empress, but a larger number held the tJtle perf?rt?ed tJ::e
duties drawing their salaries as tribuni et notartt praetortant. Their
reached fourteen under Justinian, but he ordered that it
should be reduced to eight.
24
We now come to the group of controlled .by the
ojjiciorum, and first to .the sacra scrt?ta,. the eptstulares
and Jibe/lenses, who assJsted the magtsfrt memortae, eptstularum and
libellorum, and also the quaestor of the sacred They handled
judicial petitions and refationes and drafted to. them. By
a law of Constantine they were charged w1th checking all the
judicial records of provincial governors, which were sent up to
the comitatus every six months. Those who served the
acted as clerks in his high court of when he With the
praetorian prefect. They also recer;red petltJons of all
kinds, including those for grants of and read out
in the consistory the requests of provmcJal and diocesan delega-
tions. By a law of 370 they received annual re.ports on all students
at the university of Rome. They also received re.tur?s on the
strength of military units from the duces and magtstrt milttum; and
progress reports on the corn supply. of Rome from the praefectus
annonae in Africa and other authorJtJes concerned.
25

Another important side of their work was the issue of proba-
toriae, or letters of appointment, to civil servants. This task was
distributed in what appears to be a quite arbitrary way between the
three scrinia. A law of Leo sets out a schedule. The scrinium
memoriae issued probatoriae to the agentes in rebus, and the palatini
of the largitiones and res privata; the scrinium epistularum to officials
of the praetorian and urban prefects, proconsuls and vicars; the
scrinium libellorum to officials of the magistri militum and duces,
and to various minor palatine offices. The scrinium memoriae also
issued commissions to the commanders of alae and cohortes, who
were listed on the laterculum minus under the care of the quaestor.
The senior of the quaestor's assistants, who was at the same time
the third senior clerk of the memoriales, handled this business and
was accordingly known as the laterculensis.26
The scrinia were relatively small bodies: Leo laid down an
establishment of 62 for the memoriales, and 34 for the epistulares
and libellenses. Promotion was strictly by seniority, each clerk
(exceptor) rising step by .step until he became melloproximus and
finally proximus, the senior member of his scrinium. Promotion
at first must have been slow as the proximi served three years. In
396 their term of office was reduced to two years in the East, and
in 397 to one year in the West: in 416 the one year rule was also
adopted in the East. Thus each clerk moved up one place a year.
By the fifth century, however, if not earlier, an aspirant might have
to wait many years as a supernumerary before he obtained an
established post at all.27
By this time established posts were saleable, and Theodosius II
in 444 laid down regular rules for their orderly sale. As the
proximus of each scrinium retired each year, he could sell the vacancy
thus created at the bottom of the list for the fixed price of 2 5o
solidi to the senior supernumerary, and if he refused, to the next
and so on till a willing purchaser was found. Seniority among
supernumeraries was 1_10t fixed exactly by date of enrolment,
for those who worked m the office might be moved up in the list
at the discretion of the thirteen senior clerks over the heads of
those who did not; sons of proximi, however, did not lose their
as supernumeraries, however idle they were. Occasional
yacancles were also caused by the death of clerks during service:
m these cases the heirs of the deceased clerk similarly sold the
vacancy arising at the bottom of the list to the senior supernumerary
at the fixed price of 2 5o solidi. Those who acquired an established
post had also to pay to the melloproximus or adiutor an entrance fee
of 20 or r 5 solidi according to the custom of the scrinium.2s
Further complications were caused by the service of the clerks
under the quaestor. Justin an old rule th.at the
assistants (adiutores) were to be !muted to 12 memortales, 7
and 7 !ibellenses and enacted that no one was to be promoted mto
this select group until its numbers had reduced to these
figures. Exceptions were, however, made m favour of three
senior assistants of the quaestor, who were the !aterculensts from
the memoriales and the melloproximi of the other two scrinia. These
were allowed to nominate successors to themselves on the quaes-
tor's staff when they returned as melloproximus and as proximi to
their own scrinia. Later further concessions were made to aged
assistants of the quaestor, who, if too infirm to perform their
duties were allowed to nominate substitutes. The result was that
reguJlr prom<;>tion was clog(;ed and. the assistants sold
their nominations for exorbitant pnces. Justlruan reaffirmed
old maximum of twenty-six adiutores and allowed (or their
heirs) to sell their places for the fixed sum _of roo The three
seniors were, however, exempted from this an? could
sell to the highest bidder. Sons of deceased assistants enjoyed a
preference, and five clerks who had ?one good work in compiling
the Code and the Digest were also given preference, after the sons
of assistants.
29
The clerks of the scrinia must always have been men of education,
since their duties included drafting imperial letters and rescripts,
and, when they rose to be assistants of the quaestor, constitutions.
Men of curial families seem often to have served. By a law of 362
fifteen years' service in the scrinia a man of curial origi_n from
his obligations to his city, and this rule was re-enacted m 4.23
Even in Justinian's day curia!es apparently entered the service,
for he reaffirmed an old rule that proximi of curial origin secured
immunity; with this exception length of service no longer gave
exemption. It is probable John Chrysoston::'s father,. an
official of the master of the soldiers of the East at Ant!och, destmed
his brilliant son for a place in the sacra scrinia, and that he received
a rhetorical education with that end in view. On the other hand
in 410 Polychronius, retin;d cohortalis a provincial of!iciu_m,
who had insinuated himself mto the memorta!es, was expelled with
ignominy, and cohortales were forbidden henceforth to aspire to
the service.
30
The clerks of the scrinia from the latter years of the fourth century
were accorded high official standing. In 381 in the and in
3 86 in the East the proximi were accorded the of Vicars on
retirement and in the East in 396 all clerks achieved that of
consulares retiring after twenty years' service.. In the West all
the senior clerks, from exceptores to melloproxzmt, were graded as
57S THE CIVIL SERVICE
c!arissimi in 4Io. In 416 in the East the proximi were accorded
during their period of office the rank of comites of the second class,
instead of the third as hitherto, and in 444 received on retirement
the honorary rank of comes consistorii.
31
Members of the scrinia must have made a handsome income,
not so much from their salaries as from fees, and also from what
might more properly be described as bribes-for drafting and
forwarding illegal petitions and similar services. They also by
long service achieved a high official rank. It does not, however,
seem to have been a highly fashionable service; it attracted men
of the middle classes. And it was not a service for the ambitious.
We never hear of a member of the scrinia who rose to the great
offices of state.
Rather junior to the three sacra scrinia, and somewhat inferior,
was the scrinium dispositionum. Its duties are nowhere described;
it has been conjectured that it worked out the emperor's time-table.
Its head, the magister or later comes dispositionum, ranked slightly
below the proximi of the sacra scrinia. In the West he received the
rank of vicar on retirement at the same time as the proximi, in the
East he had to wait till 3 97, twelve years after the proximi. The
other clerks of the dispositiones are not recorded to have enjoyed
any rank comparable with those of the sacra scrinia.a2
Closely attached to the master of the offices, and therefore
known colloquially in Greek as 'the master's men' (rwyunetavot)
were the imperial couriers, the schola of the agentes in rebus.
Reduced according to Libanius to seventeen by J ulian, the corps
numbered 'ten thousand' in 3 So. This is a manifest exaggeration:
in the East the establishment was fixed in 430 at rr74, in addition
to which there were supernumeraries. The agentes were graded as
troopers (equites), circitores, biarchi, centenarii and ducenarii, the usual
non-commissioned ranks of the army. The numbers in each grade
were fixed by Leo at 450 equites, 300 circitores, 250 biarchi, 200
centenarii, and 4S ducenarii, making a total, enlarged since 430, of
I24S.33
The primary duty of an agens in rebus, and that which occupied
the earlier years of his service, was carrying dispatches. After
this various more responsible posts were open to him, though in
what order is uncertain. They apparently went out first as in-
spectors of the post (curagendarii or curiosi) to the provinces. It
was their business to see that no one used the post without a
warrant, or demanded facilities in excess of what his warrant
entitled him to receive. They were also expected by Constantius II
to send in reports on the state of the province. By a law of 3 57
two inspectors were sent to each province annually. In 395 the
THE PALATINE MINISTRIES
579
number was reduced to one per province, but this limit was
removed in 412. Curiosi were also posted at ports to control
maritime traffic. The head of tlle inspectorate was the curiosus
praesentalis at the court: he is probably identical with the curiosus
of the city at Constantinople. 34
There were other administrative posts at court held by agentes
in rebus. The master's assistant (adiutor) was naturally a senior
man: he had his deputy assistants (subadiuvae), and there were
other subadiuvae who controlled the arms factories (fabricae) of each
diocese and, in the East, the barbaricarii also. as
Finally, by a system which was certainly in operation under
Constantius II, agentes in rebus were on retirement sent out to serve
as principes in the offices of the praetorian and urban prefects,
the proconsuls of Mrica and Achaea, the comes Orientis, the
Augustal prefect, and all vicars. In tlle Eastern parts they were
also sent to certain military offices, tllose of the comes of Egypt
and of the duces on the Eastern frontier. One or two years' service
as princeps concluded their career. The principes of the prefects,
who were apparently known as principes agentium in rebus, received
very high honours on retirement: in 4ro they were rewarded with
proconsular rank, to which in 444 was added a comitiva primi
ordinis. Those who acllieved only the principatus ducenae m the
lesser offices did not lag far behind. From 3 S6 they retired with
the rank of consularis, and from 426 with tllat of vicars. so
As in the other offices promotion was by seniority, modified
by diligence. The emperor in 3 So reserved the right to make two
additional promotions annually in each grade, besides those which
arose by death or retirement in the regular course. Apart from
this he promised to refrain from interfering in the normal course
of promotion. The corps itself had a considerable voice in this
matter. The master's assistant, who probably made the detailed
arrangements, was,appointed on the recommendation of the whole
corps, whicll also testified to the diligence of its members when
tlley were considered for a rise in rank.37
In the fourth century promotion does not seem to have been
unduly slow, and an agens in rebus, having completed his principatus,
was still young enough to go on to higher things. Flavius Ar-
pagius, who had been assistant to the master, went on to become a
tribune and notary. Gaudentius, who was serving as an agens in
re bus, probably a curiosus, in 3 54, was by 3 5 S a notary. Laws of
3 So and 403 suggest that it was not uncommon for ex-principes
of the school to be promoted to provincial governorships. In
the fifth century promotion seems to have become slower.
Theodore deposed at the Council of Chalcedon: 'I had served for
THE CIVIL SERVICE
twenty-two years, more or l:ss, in the school of t ~ .devoted
agentes in rebus, and was expect:Jng to be accorded the prtvileges of
that great school,' when he was in 43 r persuaded by Cyril, bishop
of Alexandria, to throw up his career and take orders. In 417
agentes in rebus who despaired of finishing the course were allowed
after twenty years' service to retire with the honorary rank of
princeps: in 43 5 the qualifying period was raised to twenty-five
years. By the reign of Leo agentes in re bus who had reached the post
of subadiuva Jabricae were often so aged and infirm that they were
authorised to perform their duties by deputy. as
In its early stages the career was probably not very profitable.
If the pay was on the ordinary army scales, it would not have been
considerable, and as couriers the agentes had apparently only one
legitimate means of augmenting their income. It was customary
for those who annually announced the consuls in the provinces,
or carried the news of victories, to receive a gratuity; Libanius
praised Aristophanes for his modesty in not seeking such lucrative
missions when he served in the corps. A number of late fourth
century laws enact that to provide such gratuities no forced levies
must be made from the poor, but that only voluntary contributions
may be raised from honorati and curiafes. This suggests that the
sums involved might be considerable; a law of Justinian limits
them to six solidi per province. 39
As curiosi their opportunities for enrichment were greater.
By a law of 3 59 they were entitled to exact a fee of one solidus per
carriage, presumably for inspecting the warrant. They no doubt
made more by conniving at usurpation of postal facilities. When
Melania was travelling with a large party from Jerusalem to
Constantinople without a warrant, Messala, the curiosus at Tripolis,
at first raised difficulties, but having received three solidi allowed
the party to receive relays of beasts. When they had proceeded
seven miles, he overtook them, and to the surprise of Melania's
secretary, Gerontius (the narrator of the story), who had feared
that he might have decided that three solidi was an inadequate
gratuity in the circumstances, refunded the three solidi. Gerontius
inferred that he was afraid he might be reported at headquarters
for taking bribes. Curiosi seem rarely to have been so timorous,
and are frequently denounced in the laws for extortion and black-
mai1.40
It was, however, as principes that agentes in rebus received
their tichest reward. As such it was their right, reaffirmed by
many laws, to countersign (for a fee) every order issued in the
office over which they presided. We possess no figures, but as
the cornicufarius of the praetorian prefecture of the East made close
on zooo solidi in his year of office, the princeps may be presumed
to have made considerably more.41
There was great competition to enter the corps. Applicants
endeavoured to obtain a place by the interest of the great. A
law of 396 allows to all the higher dignitaries, down to comes of
the second class or urban tribune, and to the senior eunuchs, the
right of making one nomination a year. Throughout the history
of the corps many recruits were drawn from the curial order.
A law of Constantine or Constantius II grants immunity from
curial status for agentes who have served twenty years. Libanius
records at length the story of Aristophanes, a leading decurion of
Corinth, who enlisted in the corps in Constans' reign and was
ultimately cashiered for some financial scandal, and elsewhere
speaks in general terms of decurions who joined the agentes in rebus.
By a law of 4I3 men of curial origin who reached the principate
were freed from their obligations; an honorary principate did not
count for this purpose. This rule still applied in Justinian's
reign. Recruits also came from other offices. By a law of 405 the
primicerius of the mensores was entitled to a place on completing
his service. The ojjicium of the vicar of Pontica claimed a place
for its retiring cornicufarius in 3 8o, but without success. Even
cohortafes found their way into the corps, and by a law of Leo were
like curiafes freed from their hereditary condition if they achieved
the principate. In this office as in others there was a tendency to
establish a hereditary tenure. By a law of 396 principes were entitled
to obtain places for their brothers and sons.4
2
The corps tended by the fifth century to be swelled by recruits
who did no active service, but lived on permanent leave of absence
in the provinces, earning their livelihood by acting as lessees or
agents of the estates of great men, or even by trade. They joined
the corps merely to obtain its jurisdictional privileges, which
enabled them to defy the provincial courts, and even that of the
praetorian prefect. From time to time-in 405, and again in 4I6
for instance-the corps was purged of such unworthy members,
but the practice still continued under Leo.
43
The agentes in rebus have achieved a rather sinister reputation as
a kind of secret police. It is based on the activities of certain
members of the corps who made themselves notorious in Con-
stantius II's reign by ferreting out and denouncing treasonable
plots, real and alleged. But they were by no means alone in
exploiting that emperor's suspicious temper-several notaries
gained as sinister a reputation-and there is no reason to believe
that the agentes in rebus in normal times had any police functions
except as inspectors of the post. They were a relatively humble
THE CIVIL SERVICE
corps, not comparable with the notaries in social prestige or
political influence, and none of them rose to eminence in the
state.
44
There were a number of minor offices at the disposition of the
magister ojjiciorum of which little is known. The admissionales
introduced persons to the consistory. Their magister already
ranked as a senator at the beginning of the fifth century. In the
reign of Justinian this office-now called comes admissionum-was
regularly bestowed on the senior decurion of the silentiaries and
carried for him on retirement codicils of illustrious tank. 45
The lampadarii presumably tended the lamps of the palace.
By the middle of the fifth century this corps was evidently unduly
swollen by many sinecurists. It was ordered that those who had
been absent for two, three or four years should lose one, two or
three places in seniority and that those who had been live years
away should be struck off the list. To speed promotion it was
further ordered that the senior lampadarius, the primicerius of the
corps, should retire after a three years' tenure of the office. 46
The decani apparently acted as doorkeepers, in both the public
and private apartments of the palace, some being attached to the
empress. They evidently did well in tips: when Potphytius of
Gaza and his companions had a private interview with the empress
Eudoxia, she pressed upon them three handfuls of gold for their
expenses, and they in turn gave neatly all they received to the
decani at the doors. The four senior members of the corps retired
every other year, after two years' tenure of the position. The
cancellarii probably performed similar duties. The cursores pre-
sumably acted as messengers; some of these were attached to the
empress.
47
The mens ores were the billeting officers of the comitatus: their
relatively humble status is indicated by the fact that their primi-
cerius was entitled on retirement to the junior vacancy in the
agentes in rebus. In the fourth century, when the comitatus was
frequently on the move, their duties must have been arduous, and
even in the fifth they were apparently still busy men requisitioning
quarters for dignitaries and officials in Constantinople. Their
task was complicated by the privileges accorded to householders
of high rank. By a law of 384 former ptaetorian and urban pre-
fects, masters of the soldiers and counts of the consistory, with
grand chamberlains, were allowed one house in the city free from
billeting. In 427 this privilege was extended to all illustres, and in
435 former consuls were allowed two houses each, and former
prefects, magistri militum and praepositi cubiculi one and a half.
In 444 Theodosius II deprived honorary illustres of their privilege,
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THE CIVIL SERVICE
while Marcian elaborately graded the immunities en:joyed by the
high aristocracy, which ranged from three houses for a patrician
to one fo_r former primicerii of the notaries. Otherwise any house-
holder m1ght be called upon to surrender one third of his house or
if his guest was of illustrious rank, half.48 ' '
The masters of the offices had finally a corps of 'interpreters of
all nations' to translate for foreign envoys who came to the
comitatus and for Roman envoys going to a foreign court. The
only men:ber of corps to history is Vigilans, who
accompamed MaxJ.mll.ms on his embassy to Attila's court in 449,
and was entrusted wtth the secret mission of procuring Attila's
assassination.49
We are singularly well informed on the organisation of the
Jargitionales owing to the survival of a schedule, attached to a law
of Theodosius I dated 3 84, giving the detailed establishment of
the '?f?ce. The law with its schedule is reproduced in the Code of
JustJman, and was therefore still valid in the sixth century. It
may be as ?n tl:)e opposite page.
T?-e. Jt will be seen, were ijrouped in eighteen scrinia
or sttn!lar divtstons. They were graded ill seven classes, the highest
of which those of equestrian order, perfectissimi, ducenarii,
and centenam; the fourth grade of secretaries (epistulares) pre-
represents the lowest equestrian rank, egregii. The three
)Urn or grades or formae probably were survivals of the classification
of the slave and freedmen staff of the principate. Three-quarters
of the s_taff belonged to the three jormae, and only a quarter to the
equestnan grades. 50
.entra?t i? one of the scrinia, and advanced by
semortty wtthin Jt until havillg served as primiscrinius he retired:
no transfers from one scrinium to another were allowed. The rate
was gradually spee_ded up. In 379 the term of the
prtmtscrtmt reduced to three, ill 396 to two, and in 4r6 to one
year. Promotion was much more rapid in some scrinia than in
others. The technicians, such as the auriftces, sculptores and argentarii,
would even after 4r6 need 30, 40 or even 50 years' service (barring
the premature death or retirement of their seniors) to finish their
course, whereas in the majority of the administrative scrinia about
a dozen years sufficed; promotion among the mittendarii was on a
par with. the other administrative branches, as among them the
four semors, the ducenarius and three centenarii retired annually
and it, therefore took only fourteen years at to move up
fifty-five places. Promotion must have been very slow among
the exceptores, but was richly rewarded at the end. The fourth
senior clerk (quartocerius) dealt with petitions, the third (tertiocerius)
managed the transport service, the second (secundicerius) ranked as
head of the scrinium, and the senior as primicerius of the whole
ojjicium. These four offi.ces, no doubt, all brought in a large crop
of fees to their aged occupants. 51
Like the other palatine offices the ojjicium largitionum attracted
more recruits than it could profitably absorb, and tended to swell
in numbers. In the East before the law of 384 Valens had laid
down an establishment which was not to be exceeded, and in 395
an attempt was made to return to it. In 399 a drastic cut was made
in the office, the established clerks (statuti) being reduced to 224.
But 6ro supernumeraries (who received no emoluments) were
authorised and allocated to the several scrinia, so that it would
appear that the object of the government was to economise by
making use of the unpaid services of aspirants. Eventually the
government reverted to the establishment of 3 84 with its 446
established officers. In the West the number of the office was
fixed in 3 99 at 546 statuti, besides which there were super-
numeraries.
52
Recruits were drawn, as in the other palatine offices, from the
curial order and from inferior offices, including those of provincial
governors: men of humble status, members of the guilds of
merchants and craftsmen, also aspired to the office. The rewards
of retired largitionales were more modest than those of the other
major palatine ministries. It was not until 408 that the primicerii
were accorded the lowest grade of senatorial rank, that of consulares,
on retirement, and twenty years later they voluntarily renounced
the honour, as being above their means: by way of compensation
the primicerius of the whole office and three others were given the
rank of praetorian military tribunes. 53
We know much less of the privatiani. The res privata was a
smaller office: in 399 its establishment was fixed in the West at 300,
as against 546 for the Jargitiones. It was divided into five scrinia,
and, as in the largitiones, movement from one to another was
forbidden: in particular those who had completed their service in
one of the lesser scrinia were debarred from joining the exceptores,
whose primicerius ranked as head of the whole office. They also
lagged behind the Jargitionales in privilege. The five primicerii
did not receive the rank of consularis on retirement until 425,
seventeen years later than the largitionales, and like them they
renounced it in 428. A few years later they too were compensated
by the grant of the rank of praetorian military tribune to the
primicerius of the whole office and three others.
54
In general it would appear that the two financial offices were
the least lucrative of the major palatine services. The officials
j86 THE CIVIL SERVICE
who were sent out from both to the provinces as canonicarii were
frequently accused of extortion, and no doubt with justice.
Privatiani had opportunities of corruption, which they did not
neg;lect, in the petitior:s for lands whi:=h passed through
their hands. But there IS no evidence that posts m the two financial
offices .commanded a price, and the voluntary renunciation of
senatorial rank by the retiring primicerii shows that officials ended
their as relatively po?r men compared with the clerks of the
sacra scrzma and the agentes tn rebus. ,
J\ll merr:bers the major ministries enjoyed, both
duru;g their working career ar:d. m a variery of im-
murutles from burdensome adm1rustrat1ve charges from vexations
su:h as . and sul!-dry fiscal surcha;ges. They also
fort 1n varymg degrees, at Constantinople or
m the provmces, for themselves only or also for their families
and dependants. Palatini could be sued or prosecuted only before
the comites sacr_arum largitionl!m or rei privatae: The other major
offices, by a senes oflaws datmg from Theodosms II to Anastasius
came under the jurisdiction of the master of the offices: they
included not only the ministries which were under his disposition-
the agentes in rebus, the sacra scrinia and the decani-but those of the
bedchamber-the cubicularii, silentiaries and castrensianf.55
In the palatine ministries numbers tended to be so swollen and
promotion accordingly so slow, that prudent parents enrolled 'their
sons as infants. This practice was condemned by a law of 394
addressed to the master of the offices: 'we have ordered that all
those who began to serve as infants or children shall be degraded
to the lowest rank, so that they may commence to claim a place
for themselves from the time where they begin to obey orders.
Thus they will obtain promotion in the service by the recom-
mendation of their work.' Libanius wrote to Anatolius the
praetorian prefect, to urge the cause of his doctor
His sons had been enrolled as soon as they had been weaned in
the corps commanded by Musonius, probably the master of the
offices of 356. Now Musonius had summoned them to present
thems:lves! though they were far too young to leave their homes,
and L1bamus feared that they might be struck off the roll. 56
Outside .the comitatus the most important offices were those of
the praetonan prefects. We possess detailed information only about
the of Italr and the East in the early sixth century,
thanks mrunly to Cass10dorus, who has preserved in the Variae
THE PRAETORIAN PREFECTURE 587
his official correspondence as praetorian prefect, and to John Lydus,
who after his retirement from the office of the Oriental prefecture
wrote a long, if highly confused, description of its organisation.
We also possess a complete list of the establishment of the pre-
fecture of Africa which Justinian created after the reconquest.
But though our information is mainly limited to this late period and
to two only of the old prefectures, the Notitia Dignitatum shows
that all four offices were basically similar at the beginning of the
fifth century, and casual references in the earlier laws of the
Theodosian Code suggest that in the middle of the fourth century
their organisation was already on the same lines as in the sixth.
57
The office was sharply divided into two branches, the judicial
and administrative, and the financial. At the head of the judicial
side stood the princeps, who from the middle of the fourth century
was not drawn from the officium, but was a senior agens in rebus.
The highest official who strictly belonged to the ojjicium was the
cornicularius. His immediate junior was, down to the latter part of
the fourth century, the commentariensis. Towards the end of the
fourth century the assistant (adiutor) of the princeps, or, as he was
also known the head of his bureau (primiscrinius), was given
independent' status, and placed betweer: the corniculariu_s and the
commentariensis. At about the same penod a fifth offioal, the ab
actis was created: he had hitherto probably been a subordinate of
the ;ommentariensis. The duties of the two senior officials are ill-
defined. The commentariensis was concerned with criminal trials,
had custody of prisoners, and disposed of a sta!f of
The ab actis dealt with civil cases and was responsible for JUdicial
records, keeping a day book (cottidianum) of the proceedings of
the prefect's court, and also an i_ndex cases the names of
the litigants (persona/e). The prtmtscrtmus nom!nated executores to
enforce judgments and other orders of the court. Below
officials came the curae epistolarum, who conducted the financial
correspondence canonicae) with vicars of the several
dioceses into which the prefecture was div1ded, and below them
the regendarius, who controlled the issue of postal warrants
(evectiones). Each of these principal officers (except the princeps)
had three assistants (adiutores) and they in turn had their clerks
(chartularii).
58
Below the principal officers came the mass ?f shorthand
writers (exceptores). These were apparently still 1n the fourth
century graded, as in the Principate, under the military ranks of
speculatores and benejiciarii. This later lapsed. Instead
the thirty senior clerks formed a special group, the Augustales,
within which the fifteen seniors formed a more select group known
F
j88
THE CIVIL SERVICE
as the deputati. This system was common to the Oriental and Italian
prefectures in the sixth century, and the deputati can be traced
back to the year 365.
59
The ladder of promotion is an obscure and complicated problem,
and we know little of it save in the Oriental prefecture. A new-
comer to the office probably ranked at first as a supernumerary.
He was assigned by the prefect, according to his own preference,
to the department of one of the principal officials, and presumably
did odd jobs on a casual basis for his chief. After this probationary
period he was enrolled in one of the fifteen scholae into which the
established exceptores were divided, and worked his way up the
roll of his scho!a as his seniors were promoted, retired or died.
He was now eligible for the post of chartularius. Joho Lydus,
thanks to being the personal protege of the praetorian prefect
Zoticus, seems to have omitted the probationary stage, and was
in his very first year chosen by the adiutores of the ab actis and
given by them a salary of 24 solidi for his services for the year.
But this, as Joho says, '?'as unprecedented; his two fellow char-
tularii were aged clerks, and they not only served gratis but had
paid considerable sums for their posts. An exceptor might serve
several annual turns as chartularius in different departments;
a few years later Joho was chartu!arius in the scrinium of the com-
mentariensis. After nine years' service an exceptor became eligible
for selection as adiutor by one of the lesser principal officers,
below the rank of ab actis. Having served as adiutor he had a
choice. He might be enrolled in the Augusta!es, and thus qualify
for selection as adiutor by the ab actis and higher officers. Having
worked his way up to primicerius Augusta!ium and then primicerius
deputatorum he would then hold all the principal posts for a year
in turn from cura epistu!arum of the junior diocese upwards,
eventually (if he survived) becoming cornicu!arius. Alternatively
he might remain on the roll of the ordinary exceptores, and when he
had reached the top work his way through the principal posts,
ending with that of primiscrinius.so
In the Oriental prefecture a double ladder of promotion was
provided for the Augustales and the ordinary exceptores by dupli-
cating all the posts save that of cornicu!arius, which was reserved
for the Augusta!es. In the prefectures of Italy and Illyricum a
cornicu!arius and a primiscrinius both retired annually as in the
Oriental prefecture, but the posts were not duplicated. In the
Italian office at any rate (we have no detailed information about
Illyricum) the offices were divided into two series, the Augusta!es
passing through those of regendarius and commentariensis to that of
cornicufarius, while ordinary exceptores became successively scrini-
THE PRAETORIAN PREFECTURE
arius curae mi!itaris (an office unknown to the East), cura epistu-
!arum, ab actis and finally primiscrinius. Promotion through the
scho!a Augusta!ium was according to John Lydus more rapid than
by the other route, but he himself, despite his flying start, took
forty years and four months to achieve the post of cornicularius.
It is not then surprising that the senior officials were often so infirm
that their work was left, as Joho explains, to their assistants. si
Joho regarded the financial side of the office with contempt
mingled with jealousy. The financial officials, he repeatedly
asserts, were not originally members of the officium at all. They
had only achieved the honour of receiving probatoriae by the
injudicious liberality of Theodosius I, they did not figure on the
old establishment lists (matrices) of the officium, they still had no
place in the procession of officials who attended the prefect on
various ceremonial occasions. There is this much truth in these
strictures that J ulian deprived the numerarii of their military status,
in order to make them liable to torture in case of suspected fraud,
but this measure was revoked by Valentinian only two years later.62
The financial side was divided into scrinia, each headed by a
numerarius, in the Oriental prefecture by two numerarii. There
was one scrinium for each diocese, one for public works throughout
the prefecture, one for the chest (arca)-in the Oriental prefecture
two, for the general and special banks of the chest-one for
military expenditure, that is the payments of annonae and capitus,
and one for armaments, which dealt with the supply of raw materials
to the state factories. The Oriental prefecture also had a scrinium
of the city (Constantinople). The numerarii were appointed by
seniority from the clerks (scriniarii) of each scrinium, and served
originally five years, reduced by 43 3 to three. They had assistants
(adiutores) and secretaries (chartu!arii), selected by themselves from
the body of the clerks in their scrinia. The assistants and secretaries
served for a year and no scriniarius might serve as secretary more
than four times, with a year's interval between each appointment,
nor as assistant more than four rimes, with a two years' interval.
No scriniarius who had once accepted an assistantship conld revert
to a secretary's post. In the Oriental prefecture the choice of
assistants in the first ranking scrinia of Oriens and Asiana was
limited to the thirty and fifty senior scriniarii respectively. There
were also tractatores who handled the accounts of the individual
provinces. Scriniarii were furthermore sent out annually to the
provinces as canonicarii or deputy tractatores to supervise the col-
lection of the revenue, and, when the need arose, as compulsores
to extract arrears, or as auditors (discussores, l.oyoOh:at) of public
works, military accounts and so forth.
63
THE CIVIL SERVICE
Below the officials of the judicial and financial branches were a
number of subclerical grades, ushers, messengers and attendants
of various kinds. Justinian's list of the oJ!icium of the praetorian
prefect of Africa enumerates scho!ae of singularii, cursores, nomen-
clatores, mittendarii, stratores, praecones and draconarii. In his
rambling account of the Oriental prefecture John Lydus inci-
dentally mentions most of these grades, and some others, such as
the adplicitarii and who served the commentariensis in
guarding prisoners. The prefecture of Italy was granted by
Valentinian III the privilege of having its own billeting officers
(mensores). In all these subclerical grades promotion was by
seniority within each scho!a. 64
On pay and numbers our sole information is derived from
Justinian's list of the African prefecture. The numbers of the
African office, which handled little more than a single diocese,
must have been considerably lower than those of the older pre-
fectures, apart from the fact that Justinian considerably simplified
the structure of the office, ,eliminating posts such as that of princepr
and cornicularius, regendarius and cura episto!arum, which had, as
John admits, become by this time virtual sinecures. The scales
of pay were probably on the generous side, for Justinian believed
that good pay was a safeguard against corruption. The salaries
are calculated in annonae and capitus, converted into money on the
scale of 5 solidi for an annona and 4 for a capitus. The establishment
may be tabulated as follows :65
Salary grades in solidi Total
Judicial side 46 23 I6 I4 u}
9 7
of staff
scrinium primiscrinii I z 6 IO
scrinium commentariensis I
3
8 IZ
scrinium ab actis z
7
IO
scrinit1m libellorum
4
6
schola exceptorum z IO
43
6o
Total 98
Financial side
scrinia I-IV I ; 4 IO(X4)
scrinium operutn
3
6 IO zo
scrinium ,arcae I
3
6 IO zo
schola chartulariorum I
3
6 40 jO
Total I30
THE PRAETORIAN PREFECTURE
59 I
Salary grades in solidi Total
Subclerical grades 46 23 I6
I4 IIi
9 7
of staff
scbola singulariorum I
3
46 jO
schola mittendariorum
3 46 jO
schola cur sorum
3
z6 30
scho!a nomenclatorum II IZ
schola stratorum j 6
schola praeconum
9
IO
schola draconariorum
9
IO
Total I68
Totals 4 IZ I7 Ij jZ z8o I6
396
It will be noted that three-quarters of the staff drew only a
trooper's pay (one annona and one capitus) or less, and that most of
the rest got no more than junior non-commissioned officers.
It was not on these modest salaries that praefectiani lived. The
major part of their income was derived from fees (sportulae) of
various kinds. The clerks on the judicial side received from
litigants fees for issuing and serving writs, drawing up statements
of claims and rebuttals, making copies of court proceedings, and
executing judgments: in the high court of the prefect they were
considerable-a statement of claim cost 3 7 solidi. By such activities
in addition to his salary of 24 solidi as chartularius and his basic
pay of 9 solidi as exceptor, John in his first year in the office netted
no less than rooo solidi. In this he was lucky: the average junior
clerk, lacking the prefect's patronage, would have received much
less work. But an adiutor could count on making his rooo solidi
during his year of office. Naturally it was the seniors who absorbed
the lion's share of the fees. The cornicularius, John tells us, could
count on a round rooo solidi from the comp!etiones, and also
received a pound of gold per month (or 864 solidi a year) from the
princeps as compensation for sundry fees which the latter had
taken over. Retiring officers received a substantial bonus. In the
prefecture of Italy the cornicu!arius was issued with a draft on the
revenues of the province of Samnium of 700 solidi; the similar
de!egatoriae issued to the princeps and primiscrinius omit the figure.
On the financial side the scriniarii received a sportula on all revenue
collected; this in the West under Majorian apparently amounted to
I solidus 8! siliquae per iugum, but in the East under Anastasius was
only a fraction of a si!iqua. The scriniarii who were sent out to the
THE CIVIL SERVICE
provinces also made great profits, licit and illicit, from collecting
arrears and auditing accounts. 66
Service in the office of the praetorian prefecture was attractive
to men of the middle class, curia/os and cohortalos; by an early law
curia/os gained immunity from their hereditary status by twenty
years' service, but this privilege was not maintained. It ranked
lower than the palatine services. John Lydus, it is true who
originally intended to join the memoria/os, preferred to enter the
prefecture, but this was due to the persuasion of Zoticus the
praetorian prefect, who was a fellow townsman and prorcised
him an immediate place. The pressure of applicants for places does
not seem to have been heavy. Viventius, prefect of the Gauls,
was congratulated in 369 for having carried out a drastic purge of
!lls office, we hear of no vast waiting list of supernumeraries as
m the offices. The rank accorded to retiring praifoctiani
was relattvely modest. In the fourth century the cornicularius
and the numorarii were entitled to 'adore the sacred purple', that is
be enrolled as protoctoros et domostici. By the end of the fifth they,
and the primiscrinius, were accorded the rank of praetorian tribunes,
to Anastasius added the dignity of count of the first class,
whtch probably made them spoctabilos. In the Ostrogothic kingdom
also they retired as spoctabilos, with the title of tribunes and
notaries. The only praifoctiani who are known to have achieved
celebrity are Polycarp and Marinus, who from being scriniarii rose to
be praetorian prefects of the East under Anastasius, and Peter
Barsymes, who was promoted to the same office by Justinian. 67
The description given above of the office of the praetorian
prefecture applies almost exactly to that of the urban prefecture-
of Rome, at any rate; for Constantinople information is lacking.
In the Roman office there were in addition to the staff already
enumerated the consualos who kept the financial records of senators
a.nd certain of their special taxes. The offices of vicars
(mcluding the Augustal prefect of Egypt and the comes Oriontis)
were organised on very similar lines. Vicars did not have a
rogondarius, .as they had no power to issue postal warrants, and had
one cura optStolarum only and two numorarii. The office of the comes
Oriontis was anomalous in two ways, lacking a cura opistolarum and
possessing an a Jibe/lis: this was perhaps because the comes, who
replaced the vicarius Orientis, originally had no financial functions
but petitions from aggrieved provincials. His office was
exceptionally large, numbering 6oo. Vicars in general had 300,
VICAR/ANI AND COHORT ALES
593
except for Asiana, where the figure was only zoo. The Augustal
prefect under Justinian had an officium of 6oo members, but this
was a double office, combined with that of the comes Aeg1pti. The
offices of proconsuls show minor variations. They haa no cura
opistolarum or regondarius, but those of Asia and Achaea had an a
libel/is. The proconsul of Africa had a large officium, 400 men; the
size of the other offices is unknown. 68
We have only one clue to the pay of the officials of this class.
If our text is correct, the 6oo clerks of the Augustal prefect had to
share r,ooo solidi under Justinian's edict, and the office had, he
states, previously-presumably before it was doubled in size by
amalgamation with the office of the comes Aegypti-only received a
third of that sum. The figure is only credible on the assumption
that the office of the Augustal prefect, which had once been an
ordinary provincial officium of about roo clerks, had never had its
allocation raised when it grew in size. 69
In all these offices, save that of the proconsul of Asia, the prin-
ceps was drawn from the agonies in re bus. It would appear from a law
of 3 8 5 that in the West the retiring cornicularii of vicars were
allowed to 'adore the sacred purple' as protectoros et domestici, but in
the East they gained no privilege. In 3 8o the officium of the vicar of
Pontica claimed for its cornicularii a place in the agonies in robus,
but the government refused, stating that on the contrary the
cornicularii of all vicars were obliged on retirement to undertake
certain expensive duties at Constantinople, while that of the comes
Orientis was charged with the care of the herds of camels, pre-
sumably those levied for the postal service. These offices, despite
their lack of privilege, attracted recruits from the city councils
and the provincial offices, as well as from the city guilds: entry was
controlled by the issue of probatoriae from the scrinium epistularum.
70
Basically similar again were the offices of the ordinary provincial
governors, the consu!ares, correctoros and praesides. These too had a
judicial side, originally headed by a princeps, a cornicularius and a
commentariensis, to whom were later added an adiutor, an ab actis,
and, in the East, an a libel/is; they had their staffs of exceptores, and
their subclerical grades, such as singulares, draconarii, cursores,
praecones and stratores. In most provincial offices the principes were
promoted from within the officium. In the West (presumably in
Italy) some by a law of Constantine received their princeps from
the officium of the urban prefect. Later, it would seem, the praetorian
prefect of Italy usurped this privilege. It was confirmed to the
urban prefecture by V alentinian I and by Gratian, but eventually
the praetorian prefect won the day. In the Notitia Dignitatum
consularos (in Italy) receive their principos from his office.71
594
THE CIVIL SERVICE
On. the financial side the provincial offices had their scriniarii,
headed by officers originally known as tabularii, who before the
end of Constantine's reign had usurped the tide of numerarii, but in
365 were ordered to revert to their old style: the tide numerarii
had none the less crept back in the East before the Notitia Dignita-
tum was drawn up. They were by a law of 3 34 made liable to
torture if suspected of fraud, and in 3 6 3 deprived of their military
status; when they recovered it is unknown. They served for
terms varying from two to five years, and from 382 numbered two,
one for the !argitiones and the other for the prefect's department.72
By a law of Arcadius provincial offices in Illyricum were limited
to roo, and this figure seems to have been usual still in the sixth
century. Justinian's praetors ofPisidia, Lycaonia, Paphlagonia and
Thrace and his moderator of Heienopontus had offices of roo
members. The scale of pay in provincial offices seems to have been
miserable. The ojjicia of Helenopontus and Paphlagonia were
allotted 44 7! solidi, or an average of 4! solidi per man, the others
only 36o solidi, or between 3 and 4 solidi each. In Africa the
ojjicia of consu!ares under Justinian fared even worse, receiving
I 6o solidi; but these offices may have been smaller. These figures
suggest that cohorta!es were graded as infantry privates, drawing
one annona only, and that the lower grades must have been even
worse paid. Officials did not, of course, live on their pay, but, like
the praefectiani, made most of their income from judicial fees, which
were naturally in the provincial courts on a more modest scale than
in the high court, and from the perquisites of revenue collection:
in the West by a law ofMajorian the provincial ojjicium shared with
the curial collectors a commission of 20 si!iquae per iugum, but in the
East the rate was only a small fraction of one si!iqua.73
Provincial officials were known as a class as cohorta!es or cohorta-
!ini and formed a hereditary caste, for against them alone was
enforced Constantine's law that sons should succeed their fathers
in their offices. Against them it was enforced with ever-increasing
severity. The reason for the rule seems to have been not that the
provincial offices were in danger of being understaffed, but that
cohorta!es on retirement as primipi!ares had to undertake the heavy
financial burden of the pastus primipi!i or the exhibitio cur sus publici.
For this purpose it was necessary that cohorta!es of sufficient means
should be retained in the service, together with their sons who
inherited their property. This is most clearly demonstrated by a
law of .361 which enacts that beneftciarii or financial officials who
have entered holy orders to evade the primipi!i pastus or exhibitio
cursus are to be reclaimed like curia!es, or like them must cede two-
thirds of their property to their sons, or failing them to other
VICAR/ANI AND COHORT ALES 595
relatives, or failing these to the ojjicium itself. The estates of
cohorta!es who died intestate without heirs also went to their
colleagues, as did those of a decurion to his curia in similar cir-
cumstances. The financial importance of the primipilate is also
demonstrated by the rule laid down in 3 89 that provincial officials
who had reached the grade of specula/ores or ordinarii must proceed
to the end of their service and perform the pastus, or if permitted to
retire owing to advanced age or infirmity must make a corres-
ponding financial contribution.
74
.
Prosperous and ambitious cohortalini naturally resented a rule
which debarred themselves and their sons from seeking a more
lucrative or dignified career, and constantly tried to evade it, often
it would seem with success. They and their sons obtained places
in the palatine offices, or those of praetorian prefects and other
illustrious dignities. They took orders, and sometimes rose to be
bishops. They were called to the bar, even of the high court of the
praetorian prefecture. Some even obtained provincial governments
or other dignities, and may have reached the senate. From the
beginning of the fifth century the laws g ~ s t such leakage
became ever more frequent and more stringent. Only by a special
imperial licence might they be transferred to another service, and by
laws of Theodosius II and Leo even such special grants were
declared invalid. The leakage nevertheless continued, and was in
some cases legally condoned. Like curia!es, cohorta!ini who reaci:ed
certain privileged positions, such as advocatus ftsci of the praetonan
or urban prefectures or princeps of the agentes in rebus, were formally
freed from their status. 75
The provincial offices offered a sufficiently attractive career to
secure recruits from the city councils, probably the humbler
decurions. Decurions also, strange as it may seem, served in the
provincial offices as exceptores without established posts and without
pay-that is for the fees only-and were permitted to do so
provided that they claimed no exemption from their curial duties.
Other recruits were of a humbler kind. Veterans' sons enrolled
themselves to avoid military service. Superior merchants and
shopkeepers, jewellers, clothiers and the like, aspired to places; the
offices were by a law of Theodosius II purged of such dross.
76
The standard of wealth of cohorta!ini naturally varied greatly
according to the grade of the service which they occupied, and the
importance of the province. A law of 3 9 3 permitted even those who
had no property to be enrolled in the office of the poverty-stricken
province of Tripolitania, presumably in subclerical grades. The
will of Flavius Pousi, a member of the scho!a cursorum in the
provincial office of Arcadia, shows that he was a poor man. He
owned only his house, which he left half to the church, a quarter to
his wife, and a quarter to another woman; his furniture, which went
to his wife; and his clothes, of which a third went to the second
woman, and the remaining two-thirds to two colleagues: half his
outstanding pay was to cover the costs of his funeral, and half to
go to his wife. On the other hand another subclerical officer, a
retired praeco of the officium of the Thebaid, owned 143! arurae of
land in the territory of Hermopolis. The same register shows
three benejiciarii of the office holding 74, 58! and 40 arurae, and an
ab actis 54, while sixprimipilares own 56, 59, 76, n6, 179! and 29
arurae. These officials may well have owned other land in Antino-
opolis, where they lived and worked. A primipilaris might well
be rich enough to enrol a son in the curia of his city, and this though
he had several sons between whom he had to divide his in-
heritance. 77
We happen to possess a group of papers belonging to Flavius
Isidore, an official (sometimes described as benejiciarius) of the
provincial office of the Thebaid, apparently on the financial side,
whose career fell in the reign of V alens. Most are official papers-
letters of the governor of the Thebaid recording the appointment of
Isidore as discussor in the Great Oasis, a letter of a decurion of the
Great Oasis, stating that he has placed a financial defaulter's heirs
in Isidore's custody, receipts for aurum tironicum paid to the
provincial treasury, acknowledgments of orders received from
Isidore by various collectors of the clothing levy at Panopolis,
and so forth.
7
8
The most interesting of the official documents are two drafts
of a petition to V alens. It appears that Isidore had been sent to the
comitatus with 2 3 8 solidi to deliver to the receiver of the aurum
tironicum. He had paid over and got a receipt for 6r, and was
instructed to take back the rest to be refunded to the taxpayers, as
the tax had been reduced to ten solidi per man. But he was, as he
alleged, and as he declared Zenagenes the defensor and other mem-
bers of a delegation from the province would testify, robbed of the
remaining r 77 solidi. On a complaint of the decurions of Hermo-
polis the governor made him refund seventy-two solidi, and he
begs that no further action be taken. Besides the official documents
there are also private documents which showed that Isidore was a
man of property. There are a series of leases of small parcels of
land from him, and judicial papers concerning an inheritance suit
in which he was concerned. The latest document (of 389) shows
him in retirement on his lands, asking for the arrest of two
shepherds, who have committed robbery with violence against
him.
79
MILITARY AND MINOR OFFICES 597
The military offices of the magistri militum, comites rei militaris and
duces were organised on the same basic pattern, somewhat sim-
plified, as the civil offices of the prefects, vicars and provincial
governors. They too had their judicial and financial sides, and their
subclerical grades. The judicial side was headed by a princeps,
followed by a commentariensis. In most offices there was no corni-
cularius and in the few in which he does appear he seems to be a
later addition. This was presumably because the military courts
were originally disciplinary only, and did not handle civil cases
until later. In most offices there was an adiutor and also an official
known in the West as a regerendarius, in the East as an a libel/is or
subscribendarius, who dealt with judicial petitions. There follows
in some offices a deputy assistant (subadiuva), and in all the exceptores.
On the financial side there are numerarii, usually two in number,
who rank higher in precedence than in the civil offices, immediately
after the princeps, followed by primiscrinii and scriniarii. Of the
subclerical grades only singulares are recorded: the office of the
magister militum per Orientem had its own corps of billeting officers,
mensores.
80
The princeps of the comes Aegypti was a retired ducenarius of the
agentes in rebus, and in the offices of all the duces along the Eastern
frontier from Armenia to the Thebaid the princeps was also drawn
from the agentes in rebus, but was perhaps oflower grade. Along the
Danube, on the other hand, from Pannonia I down to Scythia, the
principes were drawn from within the office: those in the Eastern
parts are stated to have 'adored the purple' as protectores on retire-
ment. Everywhere else in the West (except in Belgica II) the Notitia
records an extraordinary degree of centralisation, due probably to
Stilicho. Not oniy the princeps but the commentariensis and both
numerarii were drawn annually from the offices of the magistri
peditum and equitum praesentales.8
1
In the East the ojjicia of one of the magistri praesentales and of the
magistri of Thrace and Illyricum were at the time of the Notitia
Dignitatum manned by soldiers seconded from their regiments:
this was probably only a provisional arrangement, since these three
commands had only recently been put on a regular footing. By
441 they had come to be filled by ordinary permanent officials, as
were all other military offices. We have no clue to numbers save
that, when in 441 a compromise was reached between the praetorian
prefect of the East and the magistri militum on the vexed question of
the praescriptio fori to be enjoyed by the latter's officials, it was
agreed that 300 only, to be individually certified, were to qualify for
THE CIVIL SERVICE
the privilege in the office of each of the magistri. These are in later
laws alluded to as established clerks (statuti), as opposed to super-
numeraries. It is to be inferred that the active strength of these
o_ffices :"as 3oo, but that they were swollen by large numbers of
smecunst members who enrolled for the sake of the privileges.s2
Ducal offices were quite small. Anastasius restored that of Libya
to its old establishment of forty, and Justinian laid down the same
number for the five ducal commands which he instituted in Africa.
dux of Libya also had his personal staff, which included
the usual domesticus and cancellarius a majordomo (decanus),
pnvate secretary (subscribendarius), bodyguard (spatharius) and
trumpeter (bucinator): the Mrican duces also had their own 'men'
(homines) besides the official staff. The dux of Libya was also
entitled to the services of thirty-seven soldiers seconded from the
units his command; 2 5 acted as messengers, 5 as porters and
7 as pnson warders.sa
Anastasius' for the Libyan office give some interesting
figures for salanes and fees. The office was allotted in the annual
delegatio of the prefects ollly 40 annonae and 40 capitus, that is a
trooper's pay for all members without any allowance for increments
for senior officials, but it was allowed to distribute this sum among
the staff as it wished. These ration .and fodder allowances were
apparently commuted for the odd sum of 3 87! solidi; the junior
must have g?t very little if the seniors got any increments.
Officrals were forbrdden by Anastasius to increase their emolu-
ment.s by entering names on the rolls of the regiments of the
provmce and drawmg soldiers' rations in addition to their official
pay. They were, however, authorised to accept certain fees-in
addition to the normal judicial sportulae-from the troops. These
comprised I4I solidi by way of New Year presents ("a.<av<lt"a) for
.whole offic.e, and sundry fees for the numerarius and primis-
crtmus-one every. enlistment (probatoria) and promotion,
and for every additional ration and fodder allowance authorised
and 6 solidi from each fort of the limitanei for papyrus and 4 for
four-monthly strength returns. The personal 'men' of the dux
also enjoyed customary perquisites from the troops-the domesticus
126 solidi, the cancellarius 24, the rest r8o between them.s4
In African offices Justinian graded the officials as non-
officers and thus provided progressive scales of pay
at ,rr;ore liberal rates, probably with a view to eliminating per-
qur.srtes. The scales are .rather more liberal than those of the prae-
tonan prefecture of Mrrca. The total salary bill amounts to 622t
solidi. His scheme may be tabulated as follows :85
Rank
primicerius
numerariu.r
ducenarii
centenarii
biarchi
circitores
semissales
MILITARY AND MINOR OFFICES
Number
4
6
8
9
II
annonae capitus
2
2
If
I
I
599
commutation
The officials of the magistri militum were persons of some
consequence, ranking on a par with praefectiani. By the law of
Theodosius II their numerarii retired with rank of praetorian
tribunes (military), and their principes with that of tribuni vigilum
(military). Some individual officials achieved eminence. In the
fourth century Remigius and Leo, who both started as financial
officials of magistri militum, rose to be successively master of the
offices of Valentinian I, and in the sixth John the Cappadocian,
Justinian's famous praetorian prefect, was originally a clerk on the
financial side of the office of the future emperor, then master of the
soldiers. Another official of the master of the soldiers of the East,
Secundus, has won a place in history only by being the father of
John Chrysostom. He is said owing to his premature death to have
left his widow badly off, but she could to give her son a full
rhetorical education in Libanius' school. The service was often in
practice hereditary-Secundus came of a family which had a dis-
tinguished tradition of service in the office. In view of its distinc-
tion it is surprising that Theodosius II found it necessary to warn
the magistri militum against enrolling not only curiales and cohortales,
but serfs (censibus adscripti).
86
Duciani were also men of some standing; in some provinces,
as we have seen, they retired with the rank of protector. The will,
drawn in 5 67, of Flavius Theodore, an exceptor in the ducal office
of the Thebaid, shows him to have been a man of rank and sub-
stance. He was the son of a barrister of the provincial court of
the Thebaid, and owned land in the territories of three cities,
Hermopolis, Antinoopolis and Panopolis, and house property in
Hermopolis and Antinoopolis, as well as a number of slaves. He
was a pious man, and left nearly all his land and houses to a
monastery, reserving one estate only for his grandmother. His
own house was to be sold and the money used for redeeming pri-
soners. His slaves were to be freed and granted their peculia and
legacies of six solidi each. His old nurse and her daughter were to
receive a pension of twelve solidi a year. 87
This does not exhaust the list of civil servants in the empire.
6oo THE CIVIL SERVICE
The largitiones and the res privata had their staffs in the dioceses and
provinces. Of the highest rank were the mysterious !argitionales
civitatum, known only in the fourth century, who were entered on
the establishment of the palatine office and shared its privileges.
In the depots of the largitiones, the thesauri, were accountants
(scriniarii), known as thesaurenses: nothing is known of them save
that their probatoriae were issued from the sacra scrinia, so that they
must have ranked as high as vicariani or duciani. The officials of the
rationales of the res privata (and probably largitiones) ranked much
lower. They were styled Caesariani, and no doubt were descended
from the slave and freedmen staffs of the procurators of the
Principate, who were so called. They are severely criticised in the
Codes for their rapacity and dishonesty in seizing confiscated and
escheated estates and making inventories of them. This criticism
is borne out by an anecdote which Ammianus tells of a band of
Syrian brigands, who, masquerading as the officium of the rationalis,
carried off all the movables of a wealthy house under a forged
order.
88

The minor magistrates of Rome and Constantinople, the prefects
of the annona and the vigiles, the consular of the aqueducts and so
forth, also had their o.fficia. There were finally the civil servants of
the ordinary cities of the empire. They bore a variety of titles-
tabular#, scribae, logographi, diurnarii, censuales-but little is known
of the specific duties of any save the tabularius civitatis. He kept the
tax assessment of the city-and was thus in a position to grant
illicit immunity or distribute the tax burden unfairly. He checked
the collection of the taxes, drawing up returns every four months
of taxes received (to prevent them being collected twice over) and
issuing lists of arrears to the exactores. All were humble fry,
forbidden to take service in the army or in any office of the central
government: in 401 Honorius had even to enact that slaves and
coloni should be excluded from these offices. They could, however,
if of sufficient means and of good character, aspire to the decurion-
ate, and humble decurions sometimes took service in the municipal
offices, thereby forfeiting their curial status and becoming liable
to torture. Besides these strictly civic employees, who belonged to
the municipalia o.fficia, there were in the cities officials seconded from
provincial office. There were the stationarii who fulfilled police
functions, arresting criminals and consigning them to their local
lockups, and guarding the city gates and checking postal warrants
and co1lecting octroi tolls. The defensor civitatis also enjoyed the
services of one shorthand clerk (exceptor) and two other officials
to execute the orders of his court, seconded from the provincial
office.
89
THE CHARACTER OF THE SERVICE 6oi
Lastly one must not omit a curious archaic survival, the decuries
of lictors and scribae librarii. These were the last remnant of the
ancient civil service of the Roman Republic, and still showed
signs of life, successfully petitioning for confirmation of their
privileges and fees in 3 86, 3 89, 404, 407 and 409, and surviving
under the Ostrogothic kingdom and even under Justinian. They
mostly served the old Republican magistrates, the praetors and
consuls, at Rome, but they also functioned in the provinces, per-
haps under proconsuls. In 41 r the legate of the proconsul of Africa
is recorded to have had a scriba, and in the Notitia Dignitatum a
'quaestor' is listed in the officium of the proconsul of Achaea: he is
surely not the old Republican magistrate, but the scriba quaestorius.
The institution was also transplanted to Constantinople where in
Justinian's day the praetor Constantianus is recorded to have
possessed a scriba.so
The Roman civil service suffered from all the faults of an
overripe bureaucracy. It was intensely conservative. It preserved
curious old titles and grades, going back to the Principate and even
the Republic, cornicularius, speculator, heneficiarius; its members
became praetorian tribunes or tribunes of the vigiles long after the
praetorian guard and vigiles had ceased to exist. John Lydus, the
Roman civil servant whom we know best, takes immense pride in
the antiquity of his office. The praetorian prefecture, he repeatedly
explains, is lineally descended from the commander of the horse,
who was second in command to Ramulus and the kings ofRome-
the difference between prefect (ii:n:aexo,;) and magister equitum
(Zn:n:aexo,;) being one merely of orthography; and he proudly
traces back the office of cornicularius, which crowned his own
career, to that of commander of the right wing (cornu) in the regal
army of Rome.91
Another of John's major complaints is that Latin, which no
member of the public and very few of the clerks understood, was
no longer the official language of the praetorian prefecture of the
East. It had been abolished by Cyrus, prefect in 439-41, 'an
Egyptian admired even now for his poetic talent ... who under-
stood nothing but poetry'. John repeatedly cites an ancient adage
that evil would befall the empire when Latin ceased to be used,
and quotes with loving nostalgia some of the old Latin formulae-
' et collocare eum in legione prima adiutrice nostra' and the like.
He had, it is true, a personal reason for regretting the fall of Latin,
as he had taken the trouble to learn the language and considered
6o2 THE CIVIL SERVICE
himself something of a scholar; but his resistance to change is
typical of the service. 92
The service was also, if John may be taken as typical, excessively
devoted to forms and much addicted to 'papyrasserie'. John
himself evidently delighted in forms for their own sake, the longer
and more complicated the better, and revelled in files, daybooks,
indices and the like-the cottidianum and the persona!e of the
prefecture were his pride. The multiplication of paper work
undoubtedly choked the administrative machine, and greatly
increased the cost of justice, and this may be laid to the charge of
the bureaucracy.
The service was riven by departmental jealousies, mainly concern-
ed with their jurisdictional privileges and with the allocation of work
-and the fees which it brought. We can trace in the Codes and
Novels the struggles between the praetorian prefecture and the
offices of the magistri mifitum and the largitiones and res privata for
jurisdiction over soldiers and military and financial officials and
revenue cases. In the soqrces we can follow disputes between the
sacra scrinia and the offices of the masters of the soldiers over the
issue of commissions to officers of the limitanei, and between the
sacra scrinia and the praetorian prefecture over the judicial fees of
appeals to the high courts. John Lydus is again typical. His
major passion is loyalty to the prefecture and hatred of the upstart
department of the master of the offices, which had robbed the
prefecture of the arms factories, and intruded an agens in rebus as
princeps of the office. Within the prefecture itself his loyalty to the
judicial side and jealousy of the encroachments of the financial
officials is as impassioned, and he devotes many pages to laments
over the fallen glories of the prefect's court and its once honoured
and affiuent clerks. 93
The service was excessively rigid in structure, allowing for no
transfers of misfits or promotion by merit. Generally speaking a
clerk, once enrolled in an office or even in a particular scrinium,
remained in it for life, and rose by strict seniority, until ultimately,
if he stayed the course and survived, he reached the headship of his
office or department. A clerk might be cashiered for gross mis-
conduct, or lose seniority or his place by persistent absenteeism over
several years, but he could not accelerate his promotion by special
diligence-though he might do so by grafr. There were some
regular transfers from one office to another-from the agentes in
re bus 'to the principatus for instance-but in general migration was
discouraged and in many cases was prohibited.
94
There were two posts which defied this rule, those of domesticus
and canceflarius. The former was the personal assistant of his chief;
THE CHARACTER OF THE SERVICE 603
the latter originally his doorkeeper, came to control access to his
court. All officers of state seem to have had domestici; they are
attested for praetorian and urban prefects, magistri mi!itum,
praepositi sacri cubiculi, quaestors and masters of the offices, comites
rei militaris and duces, provincial governors, and also for tribunes
of the scholae and of ordinary regiments. Cancel!arii are also known
for most officers of state who had judicial functions, from the
prefects and magistri mifitum to duces and provincial governors.
They first appear in the middle of the fourth century, and were
originally not members of the o.lficium but brought in frorr:
by their chiefs. Domestici of provincial governors were hke thetr
employers forbidden to make purchases or marry wives in
province during their period of office, and domestici and cancellarti
were obliged to remain fifty days in the province after ceasing to
serve, in order to enable the provincials to prosecute them for their
misdemeanours.
By the end of the fourth century, however, it was becoming
customary for a magistrate to choose his domesticus or cancellarius
from the o.!ficium, and in 423 Theodosius II forbade provincial
governors to bring in outsiders, and ordered that cancellarii should
be appointed on the responsibility of the o.lficium, and apparently
from its number. By the sixth century cancellarii and domestici,
though they were still not strictly a part of the ojjicium, seem always
to have been drawn from it, but the magistrate retained a certain
liberty of choice and was not bound by any rigid rule of senioritY:.
In the praetorian prefecture of the East there were two cancel/am
drawn from the Augustafes and exceptores; they received a stipend
of a solidus a day. In the prefecture of Africa there were also
probably two, who shared an annual stipend of 7 lb. gold (252
solidi each). The praetorian prefect of Italy had only one cancel-
larius, but he appointed members of his o.!ficium to serve as cancel-
larii to the provincial governors.
95
The system of advancement by strict seniority, without an age
limit, had manifest disadvantages. The senior officials were often,
as the laws admit, past active work, and the junior clerks had to pass
long years of frustrating inactivity. It would seem that in general
both the work and the pay were too much concentrated upon the
seniors.
96
Enrolment in any of the higher offices was not without its
expenses. Probatoriae were to be. had for from the
sacra scrinia-those for appomtments m the praetonan prefecture
cost 5 solidi, raised in Justinian's reign to 20: and all civil
from vicariani, duciani and thesaurenses upwards had to obtatn thetr
probatoriae thence. There were also often customary payments to
G
THE CIVIL SERVICE
the establishment officer of the department COncerned-I j or 20
solidi in the sacra scrinia, for instance, to the melloproximus or
adiutor. In the best offices, moreover, from the middle of the fifth
century at any rate, a place had to be bought, either at a fixed tariff
or at its market price. This practice is firmly attested only for
the superior palatine offices, such as the notaries, silentiaries and
the sacra scrinia, but there is a suggestion in John Lydus that places
in the praetorian prefecture of the East were saleable in his day.
97
A clerk had then to pass many years underemployed and meagrely
remunerated. When well advanced in seniority he qualified for
positions which involved more responsible work and brought in
substantial fees. Finally, at the very end of his career, usually in his
last year or two, he came in for a rich reward, either by a great
concentration of fees, or by selling the vacancy occasioned by his
retirement, or by an outright bonus. These final earnings were
regarded as in lieu of a pension. As Procopius explains the system,
'those who serve the emperor or the ministers in Constantinople
either under arms or as clerks or otherwise are originally placed at
the bottom of the lists, and as time goes on advance into the places of
those who die or retire in their several departments until eventually
they gain the first place and reach the summit of honour. And for
those who have arrived at this rank sufficient sums of money
were by ancient custom assigned-altogether more than ro,ooo lb.
gold a year-for them to support themselves in old age'. If aged
officials died during their final or even their penultimate year the
laws sometimes alleviated the distress of their families by allowing
them none the less to receive the final reward of their fathers'
service.
98
The civil service abounded in other typically bureaucratic abuses.
Numbers always tended to swell, despite periodic purges, especially
in the grander and most lucrative offices, and no sooner did the
imperial government lay down fixed maximum establishments than
a host of supernumeraries accumulated, who either merely waited
for a vacancy or worked without pay (for fees only), until in some
cases a maximum. establishment of supernumeraries had to be laid
down. The service abounded in sinecure posts, which had ceased
to involve any serious duties, though they still carried salaries; and
often fees as well. 99
Absenteeism was rife. In 378 Gratian laid down a scale of
penalties for agentes in re bus, clerks of the scrinia and palatini of the
two financial offices who exceeded their leave. Six months'
absence cost five places in seniority, a year's ten, four years' forty;
only if he stayed away more than four years without leave was a
clerk cashiered. Leave might be prolonged by fictitious duty in the
THE CHARACTER OF THE SERVICE 6oj
provinces. Symmachus wrote to 'the comes rei privatae on behalf of
Eusebius, an elderly privatianus. Eusebius had, he admitted, been
absent for a long while, allegedly owing to sickness: he did not
even now wish to return to the office, but asked to be given the
mission of collecting arrears in Etruria. One wonders whether he
lived in Etruria, and was seeking to prolong his holiday.
100
Absentees, though they might draw their salaries, forfeited their
fees, unless they had the foresight to appoint a deputy to do their
work, like Egersius, a scriniarius of the praetorian prefecture of the
East, who in the reign ofTheodosius II, 'put a man of his own into
his scrinium and himself began to lead a holy and pious life' as
guestmaster in a monastery, 'distributing food from what God gave
to him in his official post'. Pluralism was common. Justinian
tried to suppress it, ordering those who held two, three or more
posts, to select one to keep, and to vacate the rest, selling those
which were legally saleable. Even he excepted from this rule
certain well-established combinations of posts, such as the service
of the memoriales or agentes in rebus as laterculenses, pragmaticarii or
a secretis.
101
The service was also undoubtedly corrupt and rapacious. Its
members were on the whole miserably paid, and to make ends meet
had to supplement their salaries with fees and perquisites. Many
of these came to be hallowed by custom and ultimately fixed by
law, and the worst that can be said of them is that they greatly
increased the costs of justice and of revenue collection. But apart
from these regular sportulae, which had themselves been originally
illicit tips, the laws constantly allude to more serious abuses. There
was much extortion by financial officials in collecting the taxes,
and the audit of provincial and civic and military accounts was
regularly exploited for blackmail. The various clerks handling
petitions of all kinds, for offices, codicils of rank, immunities, grants
of imperial land and sundry privileges, in particular the members
of the sacra scrinia and the privatiani, must have made a regular
income by drafting and submitting for signature improper and even
illegal requests. The emperors naturally tended to sigri on the
dotted line the sheaves of petitions stacked in their in-trays. In
many laws they declare invalid even grants bearing their own
signature, if contrary to their constitutions, and threaten with
severe penalties the clerks responsible for drafting them.
102
As a whole the civil servants of the later Roman empire seem
to have been an unambitious and unenterprising class. Except for
the notaries in the fourth century and some financial officials in the
fifth and sixth, very few achieved eminence or rose into the official
aristocracy. Some migrated, either during service or having
6o6 THE CIVIL SERVICE
completed their term, to superior ministries, but most seem to have
been content to serve in one office until they at long last retired with
a competence and the appropriate privileges and rank. Nor were
they on the whole more ambitious for their sons. Service was
legally and compulsorily hereditary only for the cohortales, and here
the rigidity of the law caused considerably friction, as we have seen,
and ambitious fathers sent their sons to the bar or placed them in
superior offices. In the higher offices, among the a gentes in re bus,
for instance, and the sacra scrinia, there was on the contrary a
tendency for the service to become hereditary by the spontaneous
desire of their members to place their sons in the same office.
This tendency was so well established at Rome by the end of
the fifth century that Theoderic pensioned not only the serving
members of various offices which he suppressed such as the
silentiaries, but also their descendants.l
03
'
Despite its many and manifest failings the civil service un-
doubtedly played a vital part in the preservation of the empire.
The permanent civil servants knew the procedure and the regula-
tions far better than their transient chiefs, who were often aristocrats
chosen for no better reason than their birth and wealth. They had
moreover less pressing need for getting rich quick than their
who usually held office for a matter of a year or two only,
if so long, and they had therefore rather less temptation to serious
or extortion. The cohortales, moreover, at any rate,
hvmg among the people whom they administered, and likely to
pass their . declining days in the province, must have felt some
fellow-feeling for the provincials, and, if only for their own future
comfort, must have been more considerate to them than a governor
who came from outside and stayed for a brief spell only: the
officials who are principally accused of fiscal extortion are the
palatini and praefectiani who were sent out from the central offices
on temporary missions.l04
Civil servants thus acted as a check on the inexperience and
rapacity and corruption of their chiefs, and were expected to do so
by the emperors. In most laws the minister, or governor, and his
ojjicium, are held e.qually responsible for their enforcement, and both
are threatene? fines. for failure to carry them out. In some
la'Ys ojjiczum 1s even mstructed to make representations to its
chief if he flouts the rules, and fined if it fails to do so. Nor were
a!l ?fficials entirely lacking i? or public spirit. It was a
crvil servant, Mannus, who msprred many of Anastasius' financial
reforms, and another, .John the Cappadocian, who probably
suggested the great admmistrative changes made by Justinian.
10
5
CHAPTER XVII
THE ARMY
T
HE history of the later Roman army falls into two distinct
chapters. This is partly due to our sources of information.
Ammianus gives us a detailed and reliable insight into the
army of the mid-fourth century, and with the aid of Zosimus, and
other lesser historians, and of the Theodosian Code, it is possible
to glimpse something of the previous development of the military
system back to Diocletian and its later history down to the middle
years of the fifth century. Most of this period is also illuminated
by the Notitia Dignitatum. Its Eastern army lists were drawn up
at the beginning of the fifth century, its Western were kept-
imperfectly-up to date down to the end of the reign of Honorius,
but in both halves there are some lists in which little change had
been made since the time of Constantine or Diocletian, and from
them it is possible to deduce something of the earlier history of
the army. In the sixth century we again have a great military
historian, Procopius, whose narrative of Justinian's wars throws a
flood of light on the army. His story is continued by Agathias and
others down to the end of the century, and the laws of Anastasius
and Justinian in the Code and the Novels throw further light on
the military system of the sixth century.
The gap in our information corresponds with a real change in
the milrtary system. In the West the Roman army disintegrated
in the middle decades of the fifth century, being gradually replaced
by bands of barbarian federates. In the East there was no such
complete break of continuity, but the army which emerges into
view after the obscure period of the mid-fifth century is markedly
different from that of the fourth.
Diocletian seems to have been somewhat conservative in his
strategic ideas. In principle he maintained the tradition of his
second-century predecessors. The bulk of the army was dispersed
along the frontiers, and it was still composed of legions with the
third-century addition of cavalry vexillations, which ranked with
them as first--class troops, and of auxiliary cohorts and alae.
6o7
6oS THE ARMY
Diocletian's main efforts were directed to strengthening the frontier
fortifications and to increasing the size of the army. He and his
colleagues possessed mobile field armies, comitatus, but these seem
to have been small, and for any important operation had to be
reinforced in the traditional way, by detachments drawn from the
frontier armies. In the system of command Diocletian introduced
one innovation, establishing in certain frontier areas zone com-
manders (duces) distinct from the provincial governors, who
retained civil functions only. This change however was far from
universal: in many areas the provincial governor continued to
command the local forces as heretofore, and the praetorian prefects
retained the supreme command, and exercised it through their
vicars.
1
Constantine appears to have been the innovator who created
the army of the fourth century. He greatly increased the strength
of the mobile field army, partly by withdrawing detachments
permanently from the frontier forces, partly by raising additional
cavalry vexillations and infantry units of a new type, the auxi!ia.
To command this greatly enlarged field army, the comitatenses, he
created new officers, the magister peditum and the magister equitum:
the praetorian prefects retained only administrative duties, the
levying of recruits and the provision of arms and supplies. The
frontier armies, the limitanei or ripenses as they are now called in
distinction from the comitatenses, were reduced in strength and sank
in prestige. Along ilie Danube Constantine seems to have largely
reconstituted the frontier army, the old auxiliary troops, the cohorts
and alae, being replaced by new style auxi!ia of infantry and cunei
of cavalry. Constantine probably also completed the system of
duces; henceforili military and civil command were united only in
one or two provinces, and such unions were usually temporary.2
During the reigns of Constantine's sons and of Valentinian and
V alens there was no radical change. With the division of the
empire the comitatenses were split into three or two armies, each
with ilieir magistri peditum and equitum. The field army was further
split into local groups, some troops being assigned to the Eastern
frontier, some to Thrace or lliyricum or Africa. These regional
field armies were commanded either by officers entitled magistri
equitum, who actually commanded boili arms, or by comites rei
mi!itaris. A distinction thus grew up between the troops of the
regional armies, who were still called comitatenses, and those of the
armies, attached to the emperors themselves, who were styled
pa!atini. By the time that the Notitia was drawn up tllis distinction
had been blurred by cross-postings. Palatine units had been trans-
ferred to the regional armies, retaining their higher status, and
THE ARMY OF THE FOURTH CENTURY
conversely the central armies had been reinforced by comitatenses
who were not raised to palatine rank. Similarly units transferred
from the frontier to the field armies were not always upgraded in
status, being styled pseudo-comitatenses. This title is first recorded
in 3 65, and was applied, it would seem, to the units evacuated
from the regions ceded by J avian to the Persians, which were
incorporated in the regional field army of the East.
3
By ilie end of the reign of Theodosius I the system of command
in the Eastern parts had been stabilised in the form set out in the
Notitia Dignitatum, which survived substantially unchanged to
Justinian's time. The field army was divided into five approxi-
mately equal groups. Two were stationed in and about the capital
and were at the immediate disposal of the emperor. The other
three were regional, stationed on the Eastern frontier and in
Thrace and Illyricum respectively. Each group was commanded
by an officer styled magister utriusque mi!itiae, who by the early
fifth century had a vicarius to assist him. The frontier armies were
commanded by one comes rei mi!itaris (of Egypt) and two duces
(of the Thebaid and of Libya) in the African provinces, seven
duces along the eastern frontier (of Palestine, Arabia, Phoenice,
Syria, Osrhoene, Mesopotamia and Armenia), and four (of Scythia,
Dacia and the two Moesias) along ilie Danube. There were also
garrison troops in the unruly province of Isauria under a comes rei
militaris who was also civil governor. The number of duces in the
Eastern parts had by Leo's reign been increased to seventeen by
the separation of Pontus from Armenia, Euphratensis from Syria
and Pentapolis from Libya, and by the transfer of Pannonia
Secunda from the West. Three additional comites rei militaris had
also been created in Pamphylia, Pisidia and Lycaonia to deal with
ilie increasing depredations of the Isaurians. In the Notitia
Dignitatum the two comites of Egypt and Isauria and the frontier
duces appear to be directly responsible to the emperor and not
under the disposition of . the masters of the soldiers. But the
fifth-century laws show clearly that the regional magistri retained
authority over the comites and duces in their respective zones.
From 443 the master of the offices became inspector general of all
the frontier troops.
4
In the West, the command was, owing to the supremacy of
Stilicho, far more centralised. There was one magister peditum in
praesenti, who, with a subordinate magister equitum, commanded all
the field armies and also had under his disposition the duces of the
frontier troops. The structure of the subordinate commands
varied from time to time and cannot be reconstructed for any given
date with any confidence, as in the Notitia Dignitatum, almost our
6IO THE ARMY
only source, the different sections are inconsistent, having been
compiled and partially corrected at various dates. The field army
was actually divided into regional groups. The bulk of it was in
Italy under the magistri praesenta!es and there was a substantial
body in Gaul under a subordinate magister equitum and smaller
detachments in Spain, Illyricum, Britain, Tingitania and Africa
under comites rei militaris. The frontier troops along the upper
Danube were commanded by four duces (Raetia, Valeria and the
two Pannonias), those in Gaul by five (Sequanica, Moguntiacum,
Germania, Belgica II, Armorica), and those in Britain by a dux and
the comes litoris Saxonici. In these areas the command of the field
and garrison armies was kept distinct. In Africa the comites of
Africa and of Tingitania commanded both garrison and field
units. The duces of Mauretania Caesariensis and Tripolitania
commanded only the local militia. 5
The units of the army are elaborately classified and graded
in the Notitia. At the top of the list come the palatine regiments,
the vexillations of cavalry and legions of infantry, and after them
Constantine's new infantry- formations, the auxilia. The comitat-
enses comprise vexillations and legions only and are followed by
the pseudocomitatenses, who are all infantry. Among the limitanei
or ripenses there is more diversity. In some provinces-all those of
the Eastern frontier, Rhaetia and Pannonia I on the upper Danube
and Britain-the old Diocletianic order has survived almost intact.
Here the higher grade troops are the vexillations (styled in the lists
simply equites) and the legions, and the lower grade alae of cavalry
and cohorts of infantry. Along the middle and lower Danube, and
sporadically elsewhere, the vexillations and alae have been rein-
forced or replaced by a new form of cavalry unit, cunei equitum, and
new infantry formations, auxilia, take the place of the cohorts.
In the lists of the Gallic provinces, which appear to be the most
recent, the classification of units is largely abandoned, the majority
being styled simply milites; this vague title is used sporadically
elsewhere. The lists of the dux Britanniarum and comes litoris Sax-
onici are peculiar in containing many numeri. This word became
from the fourth century onwards increasingly common as a general
term covering units of all kinds. Finally there are the fleets (classes).
The old Italian fleets of Ravenna and Misenum survive, and there
are numerous flotillas along the whole length of the Danube.
None are recorded on the Rhine and only a few on the rivers of Gaul
and some Alpine lakes.
6
The above were all in principle regular Roman troops, and for
the most part recruited from Roman citizens. The Roman govern-
ment had however always supplemented its citizen forces with
FOEDERATI 6n
barbarian units. Following this tradition Diocletian freely recruited
barbarians into the auxiliary units at any rate; a number of Dio-
cletianic cohorts and alae bear the names of barbarian tribes.
Constantine increased the German element in the army; many of
the vexillations and auxilia which he raised bear Germanic tribal
names. But these barbarians were, it would seem, individually
recruited for the most part, and served under Roman officers.
7
Federates, that is contingents furnished under treaty by tribes
in alliance with the empire and serving under their own tribal
leaders, were occasionally employed during the century following
Diocletian's accession. It was the regular policy, as it had been
under the Principate, to make treaties of mutual aid with tribes
along the frontier. Such allied tribes could form buffer states
against enemies farther afield and act as a curb on recalcitrant
neighbours on the frontier itself: at the least their treaties bound
them to refrain from raiding the provinces. Such paper guarantees
were by no means always effective, but the Roman government
reinforced them not only by punitive action against treaty breakers,
but by periodic gifts, and sometimes regular subsidies, to loyal
chiefs.
The system was applied along all the frontiers, to the German
and Sarmatian tribes along the Rhine and Danube, to the Moors on
the desert fringe of the African provinces, to the Blemmyes and
Nobadae of the Egyptian desert, to the Saracen sheiks beyond the
Eastern frontier, and to the minor Caucasian tribes. In some areas
the Roman government established a loose suzerainty over the
barbarians, solemnly investing their chieftains with their regalia
and thereby acquiring some control over their choice. The Moorish
tribes of Africa, when Belisarius landed, asked him to obtain their
insignia for them from the emperor according to the old custom.
The hereditary satraps of Armenia, who were in the position of
client chieftains, commanding their own native levies, were
similarly invested with their regalia by the emperor. On the
Eastern frontier the system was especially well developed. In
each zone of the limes, corresponding with the dux, there was a
paramount sheikh (phylarch), who was normally accorded some
rank in the official Roman hierarchy: the federate Saracens received
regular food subsidies (annonae foederaticiae), in return for which
they refrained from raiding Roman territory and fended off tribes
which were independent or allied with the Persian empire.
Federate tribes normally assisted only in wars in their own
612 THE ARMY
vicinity, but could be called upon to supply contingents further
afield. Crocus an Alamannic chieftain, commanding a body of
his in Britain, played, we are told, a decisive role in
Constantine's proclamation in 3o6, and in 378 the Saracen queen
Mavia sent to V alens' aid in Thrace a contingent, whose literally
bloodthirsty mode of fighting frightened the Goths from the walls
of Constantinople.
8
This state of affairs lasted until the disastrous defeat of Valens at
Adrianople, which greatly depleted the Roman army of the East
and left the Goths at large in Thrace. Theodosius I was unable to
retrieve the situation and had to sign a treaty with the Goths,
whereby they were given a home within the empire and in return
supplied contingents under their own leaders to assist the Roman
army. This was the beginning of an ever-increasing use of federates,
in a new sense, barbarian hordes who were either homeless or were
assigned lands within the empire. The term was used to cover a
wide variety of forces. Some were more or less compact tribal
bodies under their kings, but even such tribal gr<;mps
were fluid, sometimes splitting into two or three bands, sometimes
comprising several tribes, acquiring recruits from outside sources
when the leader was successful and popular, and suffering from
widespread desertions when he was not. Other federate groups
seem to have been motley hordes who enrolled themselves under
some notable warrior. Their common feature was that they were
not subject to Roman discipline nor administered by the Roman
government, but served under a barbarian leader who received
block sums for their pay and maintenance.
9
The final stages of the disintegration of the Roman army in the
West are most obscure. The comitatenses seem to have been
allowed to run down, partly through lack of recruits, and partly
through lack of funds, which were absorbed by the maintenance of
the federates. What remained was progressively more barbarised,
federate bands being taken en bloc on to the establishment and
graded as auxilia. By the end there was probably little difference
between the surviving regular units of the field army and the
federates. During Honorius' reign the limitanei were in some areas,
notably Africa and Gaul, used to fill the gaps in the field armies.
Where they remained at their stations, they eventually disbanded
for lack of pay. Eugippius in his biography of Severinus, who
lived in Noricum between about 450 and 482, remarks that in his
hero's time, 'while the Roman empire still stood, soldiers were
maintained with public pay in many towns for the defence of the
frontier, but when that custom lapsed the military units were
abolished together with the frontier'. He mentions one regiment
THE SCHOLAE
which was stationed at Favianae in Sevednus' lifetime, and records
how the last surviving unit at Batava sent some men to Italy to
draw their last instalment of pay.
10
In the East the history of the army in the fifth century is even more
obscure, but although federates were employed on a large scale,
especially in Thrace and Illyricum, recruitment of Roman citizens
was kept up. With the migration of the Ostrogoths to Italy the
predominance of large tribal groups was reduced. Federate bands
of the other type continued to be employed but they were better
controlled, being put in charge of Roman officers and administered
by Roman quartermasters.
The imperial guard, the scho!ae, certainly existed under Constan-
tine, and may go back to Diocletian. It was closely attached to the
person of the emperor (or emperors, including Caesars) and did not
fall under the command of the magistri militum, but under the
disposition of the master of the offices. This probably means that
he controlled it administratively, for he is never recorded to have
commanded it in the field: the tribunes of the several regiments
were no doubt under the immediate command of the emperor
himself. As recorded in the Notitia it comprised five regiments
(scholae) in the West, the First, Second and Third Scutarii, Senior
Gentiles and Senior Armaturae; and seven regiments, the First and
Second Scutarii, Scutarii Sagittarii and Scutarii Clibanarii, Senior
and Junior Gentiles, and Junior Armaturae, in the Eastern parts.
Each schola was (in Justinian's day at any rate) 500 strong. The
Scutarii and Scutarii Clibanarii existed under Constantine (the
former probably already under Diocletian), and the Gentiles are
recorded in the story of Sergius and Bacchus which purports to be
of Diocletianic date. Ammianus mentions at various times, as
attached to Constantius II, Gallus, Julian (as Caesar and as
Augustus) and V alentinian and V alens, two regiments of Scutarii,
another of (Scutarii) Sagittarii, Gentiles and Armaturae. From the
scholae were selected the forty white uniformed candidati, who formed
the emperor's personal bodyguard.U
The Gentiles must, to judge by their title, have been in origin
a foreign legion, and by implication the other regiments would
have originally been composed of Roman citizens. This distinction,
if it ever existed, was shortlived: the earliest known Gentiles,
Sergius and Bacchus (if they are genuine), were Romans, and by
Ammianus' time the bulk of the officers and men in all regiments
were, to judge by the individuals whom he mentions, Germans,
THE ARMY
mainly Franks and Alamans. By this time German recruits were
considered so essential for the scholae that J ulian, in his final offer
to Constantius II (who might otherwise, with a coordinate em-
peror ruling the Gauls, have been starved of Germans), promised
to supply him with 'laeti, the offspring of barbarians, born on this
side of the Rhine, or at any rate dediticii, who desert to our side' to
be enrolled in his Gentiles and Scutarii. In the fifth century after
the final separation of the Eastern and Western parts, Armenians
predominated in the Eastern scholae.12
In Ammianus' day the scholae were crack regiments of fighting
troops, but when after the death of Theodosius I the emperors
ceased to take the field in person, they tended to become a parade
ground corps. In the West they survived until the accession of
Theoderic, who dissolved the corps, granting the surviving
members a meagre pension of one annona each, which was continued
to their sons and descendants. In the East, according to Procopius
and Agathias, the scholae retained their martial qualities until the
reign of Zeno.
13
To turn to the regular army, recruitment may be conveniently
considered under two heads: citizens and barbarians. Slaves were
normally debarred from military service, and only rarely enlisted
even at times of crisis. When Gildo rebelled in 397 Roman senators
were called upon to surrender some of their slaves for service in
the army, and during Radagaesus' invasion of Italy in 406 a general
invitation was issued to slaves to join up, and they were promised
not only their freedom but a bounty of rwo solidi: slaves of soldiers
and of federates, who had military experience, were declared to be
especially welcome. Not only were slaves excluded, but freedmen
and also all those who followed degraded occupations, innkeepers,
cooks, bakers and the like. Among respectable citizens, provincial
officials and curiales were debarred from the army, but if they joined
it their offence was sometimes condoned after five or more years of
service. From the early fifth century coloni adscripticii were also
ineligible.
14
Volunteers were certainly welcomed, and we know of individual
cases, such as the future emperor Marcian, but we cannot estimate
how many recruits the army received in this way. In 406 not only
slaves ,but free citizens were urged to join up, and the latter were
promised a bounty of IO solidi, 3 payable on recruitment and 7
on the conclusion of hostilities; from this it would appear that
these emergency recruits did not sign on for regular service. The
RECRUITMENT OF CITIZENS 6Ij
bulk of citizen recruits were undoubtedly conscripts of one type or
another. Sons of. soldiers and .were obliged to serve if
physically fit. This !ule already 3 was
instituted by Diocletian. Constantme modified lt m 3 26, pernuttmg
the sons of veterans the choice of either joining the army or being
enrolled on their local curia, but this concession was not maintained.
Henceforth all had to serve unless over age or unfit, in which case
they were assigned to the curia. The rule was apparently universal,
covering all branches of the service. Even officers' sons were
bound by it; MartU:' s father, who. had risc:n from the ranks to be .a
tribune, reported h1s son for service, hopmg thereby to knock his
Christian nonsense out of him. There seems to have been no
regular machinery for enforcing the rule; edicts were periodically
posted and a comb out of veterans' sons who had evaded service
ordered. The government also claimed the right to press
(vagi), and periodically sent round officers (protectores o,r tnbunes)
to round them up together with deserters and veterans sons who
shirked their duty.
15
The main source of citizen recruits was, however, the regular
conscription, which was apparently by Diocletian. It
was annual, but recruits were not lev1ed every year from every
province, a tax, the recruit money (aurum tironicum), being exacted
in some instead. Recruits were levied on the same assessment as
the land tax and the burden therefore fell exclusively on the rural
population. Like the land tax the !evy was cio/. by
curial procuratores tironum. As recrUits were mdiv1s1ble Items,
special arrangements had to be made for the1r assessment. Only
the greater landowners would be assessed at a high en?ugh figure
to be responsible for the delivery of one or more recruits by them-
selves. Smaller landowners were grouped in consortia, called
temones or capitula, whose joint for one !ecruit.
Villages of small freeholders were sun.:larly JOmtly responsible
one or more recruits. In earn consortmm the landowners took 1t
in turn to be the capitularius or temonarius who, provided the recruit;
this duty, whim was known as or prototypta, was
considered a heavy burden, from which pnvileged persons, such as
palatine civil were excused.
16
..
V alens in 3 7 5 la1d down careful rules for equalizmg the burden.
A recruit was to be valued at 30 solidi, to which was to be added
6 solidi which he received for uniform and expenses. This sum
was divided between all the members of the consortium according
to their assessment, and the others paid their qu.otas to temon-
arius who furnished the actual recrmt and gave him 6 sohd1. From
a papyrus we learn that in an Egyptian village, by a similar system,
6r6 THE ARMY
the villager who undertook to serve received from the curial
procurator tironum 3 o solidi subscribed by the village. Before this
law, Valens tells us, a vicious system had prevailed whereby 'an
enormous sum of gold is demanded for bodies and the purchase of
stranger recruits is assessed at an outrageous rate'. A contemporary
author apparently alludes to the same abuse when he complains
that provincial governors make vast profits from 'the purchase of
recruits', and the statement of Socrates that Valens levied the huge
sum of 6o solidi as commutation for a recruit may be a confused
memory of the bad old times. It may be conjectured that provincial.
gover;10rs levied commutation for recruits from the taxpayers at
exorbttant rates, and then secured the recruits by offering bounties
at lower, but still extravagant, rates to casual volunteers. Under
Valens' reformed scheme the recruit was to be drawn from the
registered tenants of the landlord responsible or from their sons,
and the landlord was expressly forbidden to offer a vagrant or
veteran's son. By way of compensation he was allowed to claim the
remission of his lost tenant's poll tax, provided that he could not
fill up the number of his' registtred tenants from the younger
generation.17
From the early years of the fifth century special supplementary
levies of recruits were made from honorati, or rather from holders
of honorary codicils or rank: a law of 412 gives a long list of
exemptions, ranging from the praetorian prefects and magistri
militum down to tribunes or praepositi of units, during or after office.
Another law of 444 gives the scale of the levies. Illustres were to
produce three recruits; comites of the consistory or of the first class,
and notaries, and ex-provincial governors one; tribunes,
comttes of the second and third class and other clarissimi one-third
of a recruit. This levy was in fact commuted (at the rate of 30
solidi per man), as were others in 407, 410 and 412, but actual
recruits were sometimes thus raised.1s
Recr.uits were examined before enrolment. The age limits,
according to a constitution of p6 dealing with sons of veterans,
were 2 5. Later laws place the lower limit at r 9 and extend the
upper hmtt to 3 5 for sons of veterans who had eluded their call-up
hitherto. AJ2art from physical fitness the only other specific require-
ment of which we know was height, where the old minimum of
5 ft. ro in. was reduced in 367 to 5 ft. 7 in. Recruits were then
to in case they deserted. The process
ts vtvtdly descnbed 1n the Acta of Maximilianus a Christian
conscientious objector in the reign of Diocletian, was sum-
moned before Dio, the proconsul of Africa. Dio the proconsul
said: 'What is your name?' Maximilian replied: 'Why do you
RECRUITMENT OF CITIZENS 617
to know my name? I am forbidden to serve because I am a Christ-
ian.' Dio the proconsul said: 'Tie him up.' While he being
tied up Maximilian replied: 'I cannot serve, I cannot do evil. I am
a Christian.' Dio the proconsul said: 'Let him be measured.'
When he had been measured, it was read out by the officium:
'He is 5 ft. ro in.' Dio said to the o.!Jicium: 'Let him be branded' .
19
According to Vegetius there was much laxity in examining the
recruits levied from landowners, with the result that those men
were picked whom the owners wished to get rid of. Much more
care was taken to ensure that decurions were not enrolled. By a
mid-fourth century law a recruit had either to be exanlined in the
presence of the decurions of his city or if he offered himself to the
dux of a frontier province, the latter had to obtain a certificate from
the provincial governor that the man was not of curial status. In
3 8 3 Theodosius I ordered a full enquiry to be made, and evidence
of reputable witnesses received, before a volunteer was accepted,
and in 3 8 5 Valentinian II enacted that a potential recruit must ob-
tain a certificate from the authorities of his native city. Having been
issued his lead identification disc, which he henceforth wore round
his neck, and his certificate of recruitment (probatoria) he was
assigned to a unit. According to a law of 375 those with better
physique were enrolled in the comitatenses, the inferior specimens
in the limitanei. By a law of Constantine a son of a cavalry veteran
had the option of being enrolled in a cavalry unit, if he provided
a horse of his own, and if he brought with him two horses or
a horse and a slave, started with the lowest non-commissioned
grade, that of circitor.
2
0
From the year in which he took the oath and was posted to hts
unit a recruit obtained, provided he did not desert, exemption from
his poll tax (capitatio). Those enrolled in the cohorts and alae had
to be content with this privilege, but those who served in units of
higher grade obtained completing years' service
exemptions. A constitution of 3 r r-that ts before the organ1sat10n
of the comitatenses-gives soldiers in the legions and vexillations
exemption for four persons .. Constantine in 32 5 .to
comitatenses and ripenses ( excludrng cohortales and alares) tmmumty
for themselves, their wives and their fathers and mothers: if they
lacked any or all of these, they would deduct the sum which they
would have paid on their behalf from the tax due on their property.
These immunities were later reduced. A law of Valens dated 370
allows exemption for the soldier himself and his wife only, a second
law of five years later maintains this rule for ripenses, but grants
comitatenses immunity for father and mother as well.
21
There is a good deal of evidence which suggests prima facie
6r8
THE ARMY
that despite these privileges military service was very unpopular.
As a series of laws testify many men went so far as to cut off their
thumbs to evade service. Constantine in ;_I 3 ordered that sons of
veterans who did so should be enrolled 1n the city councils. He
also issued a law, re-enacted in 367, that such men should neverthe-
less serve in some capacity. In 368 Valentinian, presumably in a fit
of fury, instructed Viventius, praetorian prefect of the Gauls, that
offenders should be burned alive. In 3 8 I Theodosius more moder-
ately ordered that they should serve despite their self-imposed
disability, and that the taxpayers should have to produce two
mutilated for one sound man. Rigorous precautions were taken to
prevent recruits from escaping while in transit to their units. When
Pachomius was called up in 324 by Licinius, his draft were locked
up each night in the prison of the city where they stopped on their
journey; it was the kindness of Christians who brought comforts to
the imprisoned recruits which brought about his conversion. A
circular letter from Gaius Valerius Eusebius, comes Orientis under
V alens, to all the city police officers from the Thebaid to Antioch,
states: 'Having received the recruits being sent from the diocese of
Egypt from the recruitment officers you will convey them to
Antioch at your peril, knowing that if any of them escapes, the
person through whose negligence he is proved to have run away
will not get off without punishment.' Many nevertheless did
desert; a number of laws ranging from 380 to 403 imply that the
great bulk of deserters were men just enrolled and often not yet
posted to their units. 22
It would be unjust to draw too sweeping conclusions from this
evidence. Under any system of conscription there is a minority of
shirkers, and the military authorities tend to take precautions on the
assumption that every conscript is a potential deserter. There were
regional variations in the popular attitude to military service.
Ammianus Marcellinus praises the martial spirit of the Gauls:
'never does any of them, as in Italy, cut off his thumb in fear of
military service' -a statement which Valentinian's constitution to
Viventius seems to put in doubt, unless it was a circular addressed
to all praetorian prefects. Viewed in the cold light of reason a
military career would seem to offer attractions to the peasants who
were the bulk of the recruits. Pay and conditions were, as we shall
see, tolerably good for men of that class, there was the prospect of
steady if slow promotion and of a bounty or a farm at the end of
service, and the possibility of rising to be a tribune, a dux or even a
magister militum. But many peasants evidently were terrified at the
prospect of being torn from their homes and sentenced to life
exile in some remote province, and would go to all lengths to
RE.CRUITMENT OF BARBARIANS 6I9
evade the call-up, though t?ey had got over their init!al
panic and homesickness the maJorlty seem to have served quite
contentedly.
23
As we do not know the rate at which recruits were assessed on
the provinces nor how often recruits were commuted for gold, we
cannot tell severe the levy was. We only know that it was a
heavy strain on the depleted rural population: the goyernment
normally, it would seem, exempted the la.nds of the res przvata from
furnishing recruits, the Roman m 397 preferred to pay 2 5
solidi a man rather than actual recrUits. Nor do we know how long
conscription was regularly operated. Ammianus speaks it as an
annual event in the reign ofValens, and does not say that thmgs had
changed when he was writing Theodosius I, while a law.of
Honorius dated 403 seems to 1mply an armual levy. But m-
creasing use of federates led to more corr:mutatlon of
recruits for gold; it was the prospect of thus mcreasmg both the
army and the revenue which :-vas Valens' major to ad-
mit the Goths into the empire. Two novels of V alentm1an III,
dated 440 and 443, suggest that in the a levy of recruits was
by this time an emergency measure, speCially decreed. In the East
the last laws which allude to conscription are dated 396, but the
absence of constitutions may merely mean that the was
operating smoothly. In 404 John was m St.
Sophia with the aid of 400 newly lev1ed Thrac1an recruits, and we
happen to know that in 444-5 John, Saba's was up
from a Cappadocian village and posted to the Isaunan reg1ment at
Alexandria.
24
The great majority of the barbarians who in t.he Roman
army were Germans, but other races c<;>ntnbuted the!t quota-
Atecotti from Ireland or Scotland, Sarmatians from the lands north
of the lower Danube, Lazi, Tzani, Iberians, Armenians and
Caucasian peoples Persians from the East. The great maJonty
probably enrolled volunteers, attracted by the standard of life of
the Roman soldier which to most of them must have seemed
luxurious, with am'ple food and fine cloth.es and .equipment and
arms, and occasional payments of gold and silver c01ns. were
moreover dazzling prospects of advancement; many foreigners
rose to be officers, generals and even commanders in chief. Some
barbarians however, adventurous though they normally were,
showed same reluctance to be posted too far from their homes
as did Roman recruits. Many of the Germans in Julian's army in
H
6zo THE ARMY
Gaul had stipulated that they should not have to serve south of the
Alps.
25
Barbarian recruits were obtained by other means also. Some
were prisoners of war, or men who themselves
cretion to the Roman government (dedzttctt ), doubtless the VICtims
of intertribal wars or domestic feuds. The emperors also not
infrequently imposed on defeated tribes as a condition of peace the
supply of a number of young men for enrolment in the army, either
once for all or as an annual obligation. The government also bred
Germans on Roman soil by the system of laeti. The system was, to
our knowledge, confined to Gaul and Italy, but in these areas it
already existed under the Tetrarchy, and still survived under one
of the last emperors of the West, Libius Severus. Its character can
only be gathered from scattered references, and is somewhat
obscure. The government set aside certain lands, terrae laeticae,
for the settlement of barbarians who sought refuge in the empire.
The Notitia records such lands in the territories of fourteen cities
of northern Italy, as well as in the provinces of Apulia and Calabria
and of Lucania and Bruttium in the south. In Gaul it lists about
twenty cities in the provinces of Belgica I and II, Lugdunensis I,
II and Ill, Germany II, and Aquitania I and II: and the list breaks
off incomplete. The settlers were controlled by Roman prefects,
usually responsible for one, or two contiguous, territories, some-
times, where the settlers were more widely scattered, for a whole
province. The Jaeti were planted in tribal groups. All those in
Italy are described as Sarmatians, but a constitution to
Stilicho in 4oo, and probably therefore concerned w1th Italy,
alludes to Alaman as well as Sarmatian laeti. The Gallic settlements
include six of Sarmatians (one mixed with Taifali), three of Suevi,
arid one of Franks, and some unknown and perhaps corrupt
tribal names. Among the Gallic laeti are also settlers who appear to
be of Roman origin, Batavi, Nervii and Lingones; these were
perhaps displaced persons from abandoned frontier lands which
had been good recruiting grounds; there were famous Batavian and
Nervian regiments in the field army. The groups of laeti were
corporations (corpora publica), with a special obligation of furnishing
recruits.
26
There were numerous units in the Roman army named after
barbarian tribes, as there were after provinces or districts or cities
of the empire. Initially no doubt these units were raised from the
tribes ,or areas from which they took their names, but there is no
reason to believe that any attempt was made to maintain their
tribal or local character, and in general Germans seem to have been
mixed with Romans in most units. We have seen that Romans as
RECRUITMENT OF BARBARIANS 621
well as Genuans are found in all the scholae indiscriminately, though
some units were specifically named Gentiles. And even if fellow
tribesmen served together in the same unit, they their
arms, horses, uniforms, rations and pay or donat1ves through
Roman officials, and were commanded by officers who, though they
might be of German race, were appointed by the Roman govern-
ment and usually had no connection with then:: _it was, it w:ould
appear, an exceptional favour when Valentllllan I
Fraomarius, a loyal chieftain of the Bucinobantes, an Alamanruc
tribe who had been expelled by anti-Roman rivals, to the command
of Alamannic unit in Britain. Ammianus remarks that in 378
the Goths recently enrolled in the various units of the army of the
Orient were all under the command of Roman officers. His bitter
comment, 'which rarely happens in these days', probably ref:rs to
the federate bands which formed so large a part of the arm1es of
Theodosius I.
27
The Roman government has been strongly criticised for en-
listing Germans in such profusion into its But there is
no evidence that, so long as they were drafted mto for.ma-
tions and not employed as federate groups under their own chiefs,
they were unreliable. There are one or two where leakage of
information was suspected or proved. In 3 54 1t was thought by
some that a surprise attack on the Alamanni was betrayed by
members of that people high in t.he imperial service.: the names. of
Latinus, comes domesticorum, Ag1lo, trzbunus stabu!t, and Scudilo,
tribune of the Scutarii, were mentioned. In 3 57 a deserter from the
Scutarii encouraged the Alamanni to attack by telling them that
Julian had only 13,ooo men; he is not stated to been
but no doubt was so. In 3 77 one of the Lent1enses, an Alamann1c
tribe, serving in the scholae, while his pe?ple on private
business, gave away the fact that Gratlan was sendmg large
to assist Valens in Thrace, and thereby encouraged the Lent1enses
to raid Roman territory; he was punished for thus
military secrets by careless talk. Later another Alaman, a chieftam
named Hortarius whom Valentinian I had appointed to a com-
mission, was detected by the dux of Germany sending a treasonable
message to a hostile Alamannic chief, and executed. These are the
only cases of treachery or even bad security which are to be found
in Ammianus' detailed narrative. What is more remarkable is that
Ammianus, an experienced officer, never so much as hints that
German troops were not reliable, even when fighting their own
countrymen.
28
The danger was not very serious. The Germans had no national
sentiment. The tribes were constantly at war with one another,
THE ARMY
and even within such tribal groups as the Franks or the Alamans
there were bitter feuds between their component clans. It would
be only when-as in the cases above--a man's own c.lan
or tribe was involved that any confhct of loyalty could anse.
Moreover many Germans lost touch with their people, and became
completely assimilated. How far tl:is was true of the rank and file
it is difficult to say, as we know so little of them. Some apparently,
like the guardsman :vho gave .away the movements
of Gratian's army, penod1cally rev1s1ted their homes on leave, and
some when they deserted, returned home. Those Germans of
we know anything, those that is who rose in the service and
made names for themselves, certainly became thoroughly roman-
ised, and quite lost contact with their homes.
All German soldiers had to learn a modicum of Latin, the
language of the army, and most no doubt became bilingual.
J erome in his life of Hilarion of Gaza tells a story of a candidatus
of Constantius II, a redhaired ruddy Frank, who visited the hermit
in hopes of being; freed of demon which had him fro:n
childhood. He h1mself, Jerome tells us, spoke Frankish and Latm
only, but he had brought Latin-Greek ir;terpreters with him.
Hilarion chose to speak in Syriac; but nuraculously the Frank
understood and replied in Syriac. German officers certainly spoke
Latin fluently, as can be seen from descriptions of proceedings in
the consistory, where they intervened freely. What is more sur-
prising is that some seem to have forgotten their German. When
Julian wished to send an officer, ostensibly as an envoy to the
Alamannic king Hortarius, and really to discover the military
preparedness of the tribe, he selected a tribune named Hariobaudes,
who 'knew the barbarian tongue very well'. This remark is
scarcely intelligible unless most of the many German officers in
Julian's command were at least rusty in their mother tongue.
29
We never hear of a German officer-of other ranks we have no
evidence-who returned home after completing his service. All
seem to have preferred to pass their declining years amid the com-
forts of Roman civilisation rather than return to the freedom and
insecurity and squalor of Germany. Perhaps the most striking
instance of the denationalisation of a German officer is the Frank
Silvanus (not a few Germans took Roman names), magister peditum
under Constantius II. Hearing that he was accused of aspiring to
the purple, which under that suspicious emperor was a virtual
death sentence, he at first thought in desperation of taking refuge
with his native Franks: he was at the moment near them at Colonia
Agrippina. But one of his German officers warned him that his
fellow countrymen would be sure either to kill him or surrender
.I
PAY AND EQUIPMENT 623
him at a price to the emperor, and Silvanus preferred to take the
risk of appealing to his Roman troops. so
The soldier of the later empire was chiefly paid in kind, but he
still received some regular money wage during the fourth century.
A recently discovered papyrus has revealed that in Diocletian' s
reign-to be precise !n the years 299 ?oo-:soldiers .received an
annual stipendium, paid as under the Prmclpate m three mstalments.
It seems to have amounted to 6oo denarii a year for legionaries
and troopers of the alae, to about two-thirds of this sum in-
fantrymen in the cohorts. The auxiliary troops at any rate recel:':ed
in addition a ration allowance (pretium annonae) of 200 denar11 a
year. These sums, which must have remained unchanged from the
Severan period, h.ad by now .to the in.flati<;m ai:nost
nominal. Accordmg to the pnces la1d down m D10clet1an s ed1ct of
a year or two later the whole a11nual ration allowance would hav:e
purchased only two modii of corn, and actual prices were at this
date somewhat higher. Pay however was amply supplemented by
annual donatives given on the birthdays and accession days of the
members of the imperial college, and also o;t their
Legionaries and other first-class troops received I ,2 5o denam
for each celebration of an Augustus, and half that sum for those
of Caesars. They would therefore have made a regular 7,500
denarii a year, and more in the many years when the emperor
the consulship. Auxiliaries did not fare nearly so well in donat1ves,
receiving, it would seem, only 2 5o denarii for the celebration of an
Augustus, that is 1,250 a year.
31
Diocletian was therefore exaggerating when in the preamble to
his edict on prices he declared that owing to the exorbitant avarice
of traders the whole of a soldier's stipendium et donativum might be
exhausted by a single purchase. But pay, even including donatives,
was poor for legionaries and miserable for auxiliaries, and its real
value must have continued to sink as the denarius depreciated yet
further. These annual payments still continued in Julian's day. In
3 6o he complained to Constantius II that his troops had received
no yearly pay (annuum stipendium) s!nce his as .Caesar, and
Ammianus confirms that Constantms had Withheld the1r stzpendzum
et donativum. Gregory of Nazianzus describes how Julian, when
Augustus, combined a pagan sacrifice with th.e of pay
to the troops 'either at the regular annual d1stnbut10n or at. one
specially devised for the purpose'. In other passages Amnuanus
uses the terms stipendium or donativum synonymously to denote the
624 THE ARMY
gold payment made on the accession of an emperor and its quin-
quennial celebrations, and there is no certain allusion to. an n n u ~ l
payment later than Julian's reign. It probably surv1ved m;til
Theodosius I's reign, when Ammianus wrote his history; otherw1se
he would have commented on its disappearance. But eventually,
having become of quite nugatory value, it lapsed.
32
Whatever happened to the annual stipondium (et donativum) ~ h e
accession and quinquennial donatives were always the most lm-
portant part of the soldier's cash receipts. The amount of the
former was five solidi and a pound of silver (equivalent to nine
solidi in all). This figure is first recorded on Julian's proclan;ation
as Augustus in 36o, and the same sum was pa1d on the access10n of
Leo Zeno Anastasius, J ustin and Tiberius Constantine: it was no
doubt stan'dard throughout the period. The amount of the quin-
quennial donative is first recorded under Anastasius and Justinian,
when it was five solidi: this again was probably a fixed traditional
sum. As donatives were paid on the accession and subsequent
quinquennial celebration of all members of the imperial college,
they normally occurred more than once every five years.
33
The department of the largitionos was responsible for providing
the cash for stipendia and donativa. It was Ursulus, Constantius II's
comes sacrarum !argitionum, who, seeing the ruins of Amida, bitterly
remarked: 'See with what courage our cities are defended by the
troops, for whose lavish pay the reserves of the empire are now
exhausted', and Mamertinus, appointed to the same post by Julian
in 3 6 I, similarly complains of the difficulty of exacting from the
exhausted provinces the sums required for the pay of the troops,
then in arrears for several years. The department was also, it would
seem, normally responsible for distributing the cash to the troops.
Venustus, an official of the fargitiones, was conveying a large sum
of gold to the East, which he was to distribute individually to the
troops, as stipendium (probably accession donative ), when he was
nearly intercepted by the usurper Procopius and took refuge in
Nicomedia. Valentinian sent a tribune and notary, Palladius, to
distribute stipendium to the troops in Africa, but this was probably
an exceptional case: Palladius' main mission was to report on
complaints brought against Romanus, comes Africae, by the
Tripolitanian cities, and it was no doubt thought convenient to
combine the two tasks.
34
The sacrae fargitiones were also responsible for providing, and
probably for distributing, clothing for the troops. The uniform
apparently comprised three garments, a shirt (sticharium), tunic
(chfamys) and cloak (pallium); but we do not know how often they
were renewed. There is little allusion to the issue of boots, belts or
PAY AND EQUIPMENT 625
other leather equipment. In 3 ro-I 2 a curial superintendent of boots
at Oxyrhynchus submitted 'the account of the collection and
delivery of boots carried out by me', in which he states that he had
delivered 700 pairs for the use of a legion. In a law dated 344
bootmakers (cafcarienses) are classed with armourers (fabricenses) in
a way which suggests that there were then imperial boot factories;
but no such establishments appear in the Notitia Dignitatum, and
presumably boots were then obtained as in 3JO-I2 by levy. The
issue of uniform was already by the end of the fourth century
beginning to be commuted for gold: in 396 Arcadius directed his
comes sacrarum fargitionum, Martinianus, to pay the troops in Illyri-
cum one solidus instead of the two tremisses hitherto allowed for
their tunics. Issue of actual garments was not, however, altogether
abandoned. In 42 3 it was ruled that five-sixths of the yield of the
clothing tax (now commuted for gold) should be devoted to the
payment of cash clothing allowances to the troops, and one-sixth
allocated to the state clothing factories for the production of uni-
forms for recruits and private soldiers. Recruits were, according to
a law of 3 7 5, provided by the capitu!arius who presented them with
an allowance of six solidi for buying their uniform and for other
initial expenses.
35
Arms came under another department, being manufactured in
state factories controlled at first by the praetorian prefects and later
by the master of the offices. There is no record of how they were
issued or how often they were renewed. The issue of arms was
apparently not commuted until the sixth century.
36
Horses were the responsibility of yet another department, that
of the tribune (later comes) of the stable, an officer of the comitatus
who ranked with the tribunes (or comites) of the scho!ae: he com-
manded the corps of stratores (or grooms), one of whose duties it
was to examine the horses levied from the provincials by the
governors. V alentinian I specified the requirements of age, height
and build in order to check the arbitrary rejection of horses (with a
view to extortion), and limited the fee which the strator charged for
each horse to one solidus. The comes stabufi also drew a fee of two
solidi on each horse requisitioned, which must have brought him
in a very handsome income. The levy and issue of horses were
later commuted. As early as 367 Valens ordered that on the
imperial estates the procurators, who were already actually levying
2 3 solidi per horse from the tenants and with the money buying
broken-down horses, should henceforth pay the 2 3 solidi to the
government. In 40I several constitutions were issued reforming
the levy and issue in the African diocese. In Proconsularis and
Numidia the provincials had hitherto paid 20 solidi per horse,
626 THE ARMY
apparently including the 2 solidi which went to the comes stabuli.
This payment was reduced to I 8 solidi, ostensibly (in an edict to
pro_vincials) by abolish!ng the count's fee; but actually (in
IDstructwns to the praetonan prefects and comes sacrarum largi-
tionum) the count continued to get his perquisite out of the reduced
sum. .In Byzacena and TriJ2otania there was a corresponding
reduct10n from 17 to I 5 solidi. Out of these sums the soldiers
were paid 7 solidi to buy their horses; tbe treasury presumably
absorbed the balance.a7
Finally rations (annona) for the men and fodder (capitus) for the
horses were the responsibility of the praetorian prefecture, acting
through the vicars and provincial governors. The system whereby
the foodstuffs required were collected and delivered to the govern-
ment storehouses (horrea) has been described in an earlier chapter.
From the storehouses they. were drawn and distributed by regi-
mental quartermasters, generally known as actuarii (subscribendarii,
or optiones (annonarii): these were perhaps
different grades, the former being superior. These men were not
soldiers. In 3 3 3 Constantine apparently for the first time gave them
some official status as condiciona!es, which seems to mean regular
employees of the government, assigning them rations, at the rate
of two annonae for actuaries and one for annonarii, and making them
immune from poll tax during their service. To those whose
conduct was satisfactory he promised a dignity on retirement,
but !hey were forbidden to apply for one while serving. Their
salanes, though not their status, later rose. V alentinian I assigned
to the actuaries of units of palatini or comitatenses six annonae and
six capitus, and to those of the pseudocomitatenses four annonae and
capitus. They were to receive the rank of peifectissimus or even a
J::igher grade after satisfactory service for ten years. They con-
however, to the privileges of military status, doubtless
1n order that they 1n1ght be liable to torture if suspected of pecula-
tion or extortion. as
The static units of the limitanei apparently drew their rations and
fodder from storehouses within or adjacent to their forts: it was
normally the duty of the curial officers appointed to collect and
the annona to deliver it to the fort, but in more remote
according to a law of 369, the troops had to transport one-
thud themselves, receiving two-thirds delivered to the store.
Foodstuffs were also received from the primipili of provinces
remote from the frontier. In the storehouse they were in charge of
RATIONS
627
a curial officer, sometimes a special praepositus horrei, sometimes the
susceptor, who had collected them. He issued them to the actuarius
or optio of the unit against warrants (pittacia). V alentinian I in
3 64 laid down the rigid rule that the susceptor must make the issue
day by day and insist on receiving the daily warrants before making
delivery, but next year allowed two days' issue to be drawn at once.
Valens in 3 77 again enacted that rations must be drawn daily but
weakly added (probably for the benefit of officers) 'or at the proper
time, that is before the year has elapsed'. a
Units of the field army might receive their supplies by a similar
system; under Gratian regiments of comitatenses in Illyricum drew
their rations from storehouses stocked with supplies delivered to
them by primipili. But as they had no fixed stations, more flexible
arrangements were often generally made for them. Warrants
(litterae delegatoriae) were issued to them by the praetorian prefect,
entitling them to draw their supplies from the revenues of a given
province, normally it may be presumed that in which they were for
the time being stationed or a neighbouring one. A soldier entitled
an opinator was despatched to the provincial governor to take
delivery. According to elaborate rules laid down by Honorius in
401, the governor was to make delivery within a year through the
regular machinery of collection, and not in any circumstances to
allow the opinator to extract arrears himself from tbe taxpayer. If
at the end of the year any arrears were still outstanding, the
governor and his ojficium were not to detain the opinator any longer,
but deliver whatever was lacking from their own pockets, recover-
ing it at their leisure from the recalcitrant taxpayers. In 429 these
rules were so far relaxed tbat the opinator was allowed to exact
tbe debt from the landowner if payment was not made in four
months.
40
The above arrangements applied to tbe field army when at peace-
time stations. When a large expeditionary force was assembled
for operations special arrangements had to be made. In the
fourth century, when an emperor normally took command himself
in such circumstances, he was attended by his praetorian prefect, or
the prefect of the area in which operations were taking place, who
personally organised the collection of supplies. Thus when in 3 j 4
Constantius II assembled an army at Cabillonum to attack the
Alamans, his praetorian prefect V ulcacius Rufinus was blamed for
the delay in the arrival of supplies; they had to come all the way
from Aquitania and their transport had been held up by spring
rains and the consequent spate of the rivers. In 3 j 8 Julian was
similarly held up at Paris awaiting supplies from Aquitania. In
the following year he revived the olq practice of shipping supplies
THE ARMY
direct from Britain up the Rhine, and his prefect Florentius brought
up more from the interior of Gaul. In the fifth century, when
emperors no longer normally took the field, it became the practice
to appoint a deputy praetorian prefect ad hoc to organise the
supplies of an expeditionary force. The first instance known is
Pentadius, appointed quartermaster by Theodosius II to the
seaborne expedition sent in 44I against the Vandals in Africa.41
Great efforts were made to check over-issues. According to
rules laid down in 398 in the Eastern parts, the masters of the
soldiers were before the beginning of each indiction to send in to
the imperial scrinia returns of unit strengths, and the praetoriau
prefect was to check issues made by the susceptores against these
returns, copies of which were furnished to the susceptores. There
were obvious possibilities of collusion between the actuaries of
units and the numerarii of the military ojficia who drew up the
returns, and later in the same year all intercourse between the two
was prohibited, and actuaries were ordered to leave Constantinople
within fifty ?ays .. Seventeen years later, on the contrary, the master
of the sold1ers m the East reported that his scriniarii had been
abusing their control of the accounts to extort money from the
actuaries.
42
these precautions actuaries had many opportunities of
cheatmg the government, the taxpayers, and the troops: they
were, according Aurelius Victor, 'a race of men ... created by
nature for out and concealing The imperial
government, 1t 1s evident from the Codes, VIewed them with deep
but they seem, curiously enough, to have been popular
With the troops; they may have normally cheated the state or the
Pf:OVincials in the interest of their units, or perhaps, as Aurelius
VIctor to s?ggest, wh!le bilking the soldiers, they
won the1r goodwill by occas10nallav1sh acts of generosity. When
Julian on his proclamation as Augustus announced to the troops
that he would reward merit by promotion, the Celtae and Petul-
clamoured that .their act.uaries be given provincial governor-
ships, and under Jovlan a retired actuary accused of malversation
succeeded in raising a mutiny in which the officer examining his
accounts was killed.43
The ration normally consisted of bread, meat (either fresh veal
or pork salt and '?il. In response to a complaint
from the city council of Ep1phane1a that the cost of matured wine
excessive, it. was enacted in 398 that from November new
wme _from. the vmtage of that year should be supplied: this rule
remamed m force under Justinian. On active service biscuit
(bucel!atum) was partially substituted for bread, and sour wine
RATIONS
(acetum) for wine, while the proportion of salt meat was increased:
the diet laid down in 3 6o was two days biscuit and one bread, wine
and vinegar alternate days, and two days veal and one day salt pork.
The troops on taking the field had to draw and themselves carry
twenty days' rations. The only ration scales known to us come from
sixth-century Egyptian papyri. Some of these are positively
gargantuan-3 lb. of bread, 2 lb. of meat, 2 pints of wine and k pint
of oil per day-but these must have been obtained by some
financial juggling, perhaps by spending the fodder allowance on
the troopers' food and starving the horses.
44
The grinding of the corn and the baking of the bread or biscuit
was a sordidum munus, imposed on the civil population, normally
the bakers' guilds in the towns and the landowners in the country.
When bucel!atum had to be baked for an expeditionary force, all
privileges and exemptions were suspended, and even those of the
highest rank had to take their share in the task. Joshua the Sty lite
gives a striking picture of the problem presented by the army
assembled in Mesopotamia for the Persian war in 503-5. A pion,
the deputy of the praetorian prefect in charge of supplies, compelled
not only the bakers but the private citizens of Edessa to bake at
their own expense: they handled 63o,ooo modii in 503 and 85o,ooo
in 5 o4, and in the latter year Apion went to Alexandria to arrange
for bread to be baked there also and conveyed to Mesopotamia.
45
The main component in the fodder ration was barley, which was
supplemented by hay and chaff. The troops were expected to
collect their hay and chaff themselves up to a radius of twenty
miles; otherwise fodder, like rations, was drawn from the store-
houses. A constitution issued to the praetorian prefect of the East
in 362 implies that army horses were normally put out to pasture
in spring and summer; it rules that fodder is not to be issued to
the troops until August I, by which date the grass would have
dried up in the Eastern provinces. Units of Jimitanei often had
areas of permanent pasture (paludes) assigned to them, on which
they could graze their beasts. Grazing the animals of field army
units caused more trouble. In 398 Arcadius forbade the use by the
military of the public pastures of the city of Apamea or the private
pastures of Antiochene citizens, and rather vaguely ordered the
city councils, which had apparently complained that their land was
being ruined by overgrazing, to make provision for grazing
military animals. In 4I 5 the praetorian prefect of the East and the
master of the soldiers were instructed in general terms to prevent
landowners being injured by military demands for pasture.
46
Commutation of rations and fodder began as an abuse. In 3 58
Constantius II ordered duces to accept the supplies brought by
THE ARMY
primipili to their provinces in kind, and not to extract extortionate
sums from them by demanding money instead at a high rate of
prices. But in 365 Valens ordered that limitanei should receive rations
in kind for nine months, and money for the other three: his brother
laid down a schedule of prices for commuting the issues. In
Gratian ruled that primtpi!ares should produce supplies in
kmd for comitatenses, but money for limitanei, but Theodosius I
ordered that all deliveries by primipili should be commuted for
gold, laying down a tariff: in 396 it was ordered that the supplies
of primipili should be commuted at the prevailing market prices. 47
In the J?ast it was still insisted in 393 that comitatenses must accept
the supphes allocated to them by litterae delegatoriae in kind, and not
refuse to take them when they were abundant (and cheap), and later
when they were scarce (and dear) demand money commutation at
high prices. In 406 Arcadius enacted that rations in kind should be
issued only for men actually present, the rest (including rations
appropriated from the troops by officers) being commuted.
Limitanei were apparently by this time paid entirely in money.
In a law dated 409 it is stated that in the three Palestines all supplies
had been commuted at a fixed tariff, and the ojjicium of the dux was
forbidden to revive issues in kind or to exceed the tariff prices.
The rules for commutation were extremely complicated. In some
cases a fixed ration allowance (called aeraria annona) was paid, in
others rates of commutation were laid down by the praetorian
prefects annually, varying from province to province; in other
cases they followed local market prices.4S
In the East units of comitatenses and palatini seem thus to have
continued to receive rations in kind for the rank and file actually
on strength. In the West the scholae and palatini and comitatenses
were by 396 already allowed to take money, at prices fixed in the
delegatoria, and not in excess of the tariff laid down by V alentinian I.
By the early fifth century all rations were apparently commuted for
g?ld. Opinatores by this time collected gold, and not supplies in
kind, and V alentinian III, in a constitution regulating the finances
of the provinces retroceded by the Vandals in 44 5, alludes
to commutation of annonae and capitus as an established custom: he
fixed value: of an at four solidi per annum, and laid down
the pnces whiCh soldiers were to pay for wheat, meat and wine.49
Since the reign of Septimius Severus soldiers had been allowed to
marry and have their families with them at their stations. It must
have been in some special circumstances that Constans in 348
-CONDITIONS OF SERVICE
instructed hls praetorian prefect that for those soldiers who had
received imperial permission for their families to come to them, he
should provide transport for their wives, children and personal
slaves. Down to 3 72 the sons of serving soldiers were entered on
the roll of the regiment and received rations, but in that year
V alentinian I ordered that until they were fit to bear arms they
must be fed by their parents. In the Eastern parts soldiers' families
were still drawing rations under Valens in 3 77, but Theodosius I
must have enforced theW estern rule, for Libanius in 3 8 I complains
that though soldiers were allowed to marry they received no main-
tenance for their families, and had to feed their wives and children
from their own rations. Later, in the Eastern parts at any rate, the
government reversed its policy. In 406 Arcadius enacted that
rations should be issued in kind not only to the troops but to their
families, if actually present. In 409 Theodosius II laid down a
detailed schedule of prices, varying from place to place, for com-
muting the rations of soldiers' families in the dioceses of Oriens
and Egypt. 5
The static units of the limitanei were lodged in forts or permanent
camps, mostly in villages or in the open country: some of the larger
units, legions and vexillations, were stationed in cities, probably
also in permanent barracks. The mobile units of the palatini and
comitatenses, on the other hand, except when actually on campaign,
when they naturally lived under canvas, were normally billeted in
cities. Certain privileged categories, the clergy, doctors, teachers,
armament workers and painters, were exempt, and the burden fell
only on private houses (and irms), not on shops or workshops.
The ordinary citizen had to surrender one-third of his house to his
'guest' (hospes). The usual friction resulted. The householder was
not legally supposed to provide anything but bare rooms. The
soldier tended to demand bedding and wood and oil for heating and
lighting. In 340 Constans rather weakly ruled that householders
might voluntarily provide such things, but that soldiers were not
to extort them by violence; but a few months later Constantius II
forbade the practice (known as salgamum) absolutely, a prohibition
repeated by Theodosius I in 393 and by Theodosius II in 4I6.
Another abuse prohibited in the Code is cenaticum, which is not
defined but must presumably have been a free supper. Officers
were inclined to demand baths. This was prohibited to tribunes
and comites, and conceded only to the masters of the soldiers.
Despite this prohibition, made in 4o6, the dux of Euphratensis
between the years 4I4 and 4I7 was exacting a tremissis a day from
his hosts for his bath (including fue1).
51
Joshua Sty lites paints a lurid picture of billeting in his account of
THE ARMY
Edessa during _the years 503-5. Owing to the very large numbers
?f t_he army had been assembled troops were billeted not only
m mns and pnvate houses, but, _contrary to the regulations, in
shops and on the clergy. The soldiers turned the poor out of their
beds, stole their clothes and provisions, made them wait on them
and beat them up into the bargain: furthermore they exacted oil:
wood and salt. In 505 the poor townsmen protested that the rich
landowners ought to share the burden, and the deputy praetorian
prefect agreed. The landowners then asked the dux Romanus that
to prevent the soldiers plundering their houses as they had those of
the humble townspeople, he should define what they were entitled
to demand. The dux ruled that they were entitled to a bed (with
bedding) between two men, and to 200 lb. of wood and a fixed
quantity of oil per month: so much for the law prohibiting
salgamum.
52
Not all soldie:s their hosts, but they often brought other
troubles on the1r famil1es. One man, whose unit was posted in
396 to made himself so agreeable to his landlady, a res-
pectable that she was persuaded to let him marry her daugh-
ter EuphemJa. It when he to his regular station,
that he already had a wife, and EuphemJa became the wife's slave
and was cruelly treated by her. Eventually justice prevailed in this
case. EuphemJa escaped to her home: the soldier was again drafted
to Edessa. There he was confronted with his victim and the case
was taket; up by the bishop, who reported it to the magister militum.
The sold1er was duly charged with kidnapping and sentenced to
death. 5
3
In these circumstances cities did not like to have troops billeted
on and _some made money out of their dislike.
Synesms, havmg how dux of Libya made his
out of the !tmttanet,. goes on: . s_mce he could not exploit the
fore1gn troops, he exp_lolted through them, marching
them and changmg statl<;ms for strategic but for
financial reasons; for the c1t1es, findmg the1r presence a burden
paid gold' .M '
To treat casualties and sickness each unit had its regimental
doctor or.surgeon (medicu_s). The spiritual welfare of the troops was
pr<;>VJded for by reS"Imental chaplains. Sozomen attributes the
mst1tut1on to Constantme, but as Eusebius, in his detailed des-
cripti_on of efforts to convert the army, does not
mentiOn them, this 1s untrue. Regimental chaplains are
first heard of about the m1ddle of the fifth century in the East.
Between 456 a_nd 465 Saba was by his father, by now called
Conon, and tnbune of the Isaunan regiment at Alexandria, 'to join
PROMOTION AND DISCHARGE
up and become priest of the unit'. About the same time Theodoret
wrote a letter of introduction for the deacon Agapetus of the
Syrian Hierapolis, 'who has been appointed to guide a military
regiment in the things of God', and was on his way to Thrace,
where his unit was stationed at the time. Theodoret is so ecstatic in
his language-'the foster sons of piety and those deemed worthy of
the priesthood direct not only provinces, cities, villages, estates and
farms: but the regiments of soldiers stationed in the cities and
villages themselves too have consecrated shepherds' -that it looks
as if military chaplains were a novelty in his day. ss
The rules for leave were extremely strict. Constantine enacted
that no praepositus, decurion or tribune of a cohort might grant
leave (commeatus) to any soldier: if he disobeyed and during the
soldier's absence there were no hostilities, he was punished with
deportation and confiscation of his property, and if there was an
attack, by death. Constantius II modified these drastic penalties:
by a constitution addressed to Silvanus, the master of the soldiers,
tribunes and praepositi were to be fined 5 lb. gold per man if either
they allowed their men to go on leave or the man left the colours
without permission. The grant ofleave was thus in theory reserved
to higher ranking officers-the dux of the province or a comes rei
militaris or magister militum. The strictness of the regulations was
probably intended to check the grant (for a consideration) of
extended or indefinite leave: this is known to have been a standing
abuse in the late fourth century.56
Promotion was, as in the civil service, more or less automatic by
length of service, varied by merit or by graft. Of the latter we have
a curious document, a formal contract dated 2 February, 34 j,
whereby Aurelius Plas, a veteran, promises Flavius Abinnaeus,
former praepositus, that 'when you secure a promotion in the name
of my son of decurion in the Ala Quinta Praelectorum at the fort of
Dionysias, whatever you give on account of the said promotion,
before God, as you give, I, Plas, will repay you in good faith in full'.
On first joining the colours a man ranked for a while, presumably
during training, as a recruit (tiro). During this time he apparently
did not yet receive the full pay and allowances of a soldier. The
author of an anonymous pamphlet addressed to Valentinian and
Valens suggested that an inexpensive way of strengthening the army
would be to keep fifty and Ioo men with the status of recruits
attached to each unit over and above the establishment, to which
they would be admitted as vacancies occurred. After this initial
THE ARMY
training he became a private (pedes) or trooper (eques) and might in
due course be promoted to the grade of semissalis and then to
non-commissioned rank. In the units which went back to the
Principate, the legions, cohorts and alae, the old non-commissioned
grades, including decurion and centurion, were preserved. In the
new types of formation dating from the third and fourth centuries,
the vexillations and the auxilia and the scholae, the grades were quite
different, in ascending order circitor, biarchus, centenarius, ducenarius,
senator, primicerius. There were also specialist appointments, such
as the regimental drill instructor (campidoctor) or standard bearer
(draconarius)P
Non-commissioned officers received multiple annonae and (in
cavalry units) capitus. A semissalis, as his title implies, received
one-and-a-half annonae (one capitus). The scale then rose to two
annonae (one capitus) for a circitor or biarchus, two-and-a-half (one)
for a centenarius, three-and-a-half (one-and-a-half) for a ducenarius,
and probably four (two) for a senator. The primicerius of the unit
received five annonae (two capitus). These rates are recorded for
military clerks in Justinian's reign, but the one figure known from
an earlier period, two annonae for a circitor in Constantine's reign,
agrees with them. It is fairly certain that the scales had not been
raised in the interval, and they may well have been lowered. The
anonymous author mentioned above complains of the heavy
expense entailed by the number of men earning five annonae or
more; under Justinian's scales even the primicerius got only five
annonae. Promotion according to the same author was excessively
slow, so slow as to discourage the recruitment of volunteers. He
recommended, to cure both these ills, that men should be promptly
discharged with honesta missio when tl!ey reached the five annona
scale, and that, if nevertheless bottlenecks blocked promotion, men
should be transferred to other units where there were vacancies. 58
Thus far promotion was within the unit, for transfers from one
regiment to another were discouraged. By a constitution addressed
in 400 to Stilicho comites and duces were informed that they had no
authority to transfer men from one unit of comitatenses or palatini
to another, nor yet from the pseudocomitatenses or riparienses: such
advancements could only be made on imperial authority. By the
next stage of promotion, the soldier rose to be a cadet officer,
protector, and broke his connection with his original unit. It was
only a minority, naturally, who achieved commissioned rank. But
it would seem to have been a fairly common practice for deserving
veterans to be discharged with testimoniales ex protectoribus or the
honorary rank of protector, or even with epistulae ex tribunis or ex
praepositis.
59
PROMOTION AND DISCHARGE 635
The length of service requ!red to qualify for discha!g:e
from time to time, and accordmg to the status of the umt m which
the soldier served. In 3 I I men serving in the legions and vexilla-
tions were entitled to honourable discharge (honesta missio) after
twenty years' service, but did not achieve the full privilege of
veterans (emerita missio) unless they completed twenty:four year.s.
Constantine at first applied tl!ese rules only comztatenses; m
legions and vexillations of the riparienses soldiers had to serve
twenty-four years for a honesta missio. But in 325 he granted to
riparienses the same privileges as to comitatenses. The terms of
service for the cohorts and alae are not recorded, but doubtless
were more exacting. These periods were minima, on completion
of which a man might claim discharge. He could serve longer:
the suggestions of the anonymous author mentioned above imply
that senior non-commissioned officers, earning high rates of pay,
tended to stay on too long, and inscriptions record men who served
as much as forty years or died, still non-commissioned officers, at
such advanced ages as sixty.
60
Men disabled by wounds or rendered unfit for service by sickness
or advancing years might receive a causaria missio. The rules for
this as enunciated in a law of Constantine, were complicated and
Comitatenses apparently received the privileges of emerita
missio if invalided out for any reason at any time, but ripenses only
received those of honesta missio if discharged owing to wounds
after sixteen years' service.
61
As a veteran the soldier received a number of important pri-
vileges, which varied from time to time according to hi.s l.ength. of
service his rank on discharge, and the status of the umt 1n wh1ch
he had served. All veterans enjoyed immunity from polltax
(capitatio). Under the regulations laid down in )II those who had
served in the legions and vexillations for 20 years, or had been
discharged for wounds, also received immunity for their wives, and
those who served the full twenty-four years gained immunity for
four capita. reduced these The max!mum
exemption was two capzta (for.the man his wife), and th1s .was
reserved for comitatenses and rzpenses (that IS men from the leg10ns
and vexillations) who had served twenty-four years, and comitat-
enses who were invalided out. In addition veterans were exempted
from corvees, market dues and customs, and also from the collatio
lustrafis (up to a limit of capital invested, fixed at I5 solidi in 385).
They were, moreover, what was most important, immune from
curial duties, which might otherwise have fallen upon them as
landowners.
62
Veterans were also given positive rewards. They had the option
I
THE ARMY
of taking up trade, in which case they received a cash grant,
amounting in Constantine's reign to Ioo folies, or of an allotment of
land, in which case they also received under Constantine a pair of
oxen, Ioo modii of seed corn, and twenty-five folies for initial
expenses. Valentinian I no longer made a cash grant, but doubled
the number of oxen and the amount of seed corn for those veterans
who were discharged with the rank of protector. The allotments
of ordinary veterans would, to judge by the quantity of seed, have
been fairly substantial peasant holdings of about twenty iugera of
arable (and as much again for the alternate fallow year). Since they
were normally taken from deserted lands, the soil was probably of
inferior quality and in poor condition: but they were tax free, a
very important consideration. 63
A man promoted from the ranks first became a protector. The
organisation of the protectores is an obscure and tangled problem.
Even before Diocletian's teign there was a corps of protectores in
attendance on the emperor. Later, probably under Constantine and
certainly by the middle of the fourth century, these protectores
came to be distinguished as domestici, and their commander to be
called the comes domesticorum. There still continued to be plain
protectores, who naturally ranked lower than the domestici. They
were apparently under the command of tbe magistri militum, but
though operationally scattered formed for establishment purposes
a single corps, in which promotion went by seniority. Among the
domestici some actually served in the comitatus (praesentales), others
were seconded (deputati) to tbe magistri militum and other com-
manders. In the fourth century the domestici, like the protectores,
formed for establishment purposes a single corps, but operationally
they seem to have been divided into four scholae, a junior and a
senior of infantry and of cavalry. From the early fifth century
infantry and cavalry became separate corps, commanded by a comes
domesticorum peditum and equitum respectively.64
We have no clue to the number of the ordinary protectores.
J ulian cut down tbe number of domestici praesentales to fifty in each
schola, that is probably 2oo in all. As Julian's reduction of the
comitatus was drastic, it is probable that numbers were normally
much larger; and even Julian did not reduce the deputati. Both
domestici and protectores served as staff officers, and were assigned by
the emperor and the magistri militum and other commanders to
whom they were seconded to a great variety of special duties.
They were sent to round up the sons of veterans or vagrants for
I
I
I
PROTECTORES
enrolment in the army, and to convoy recruits to headquarters.
They were posted on the roads to inspect wagons and enforce the
regulations limiting their loads, and at ports to examine cargoes
and prevent goods on the prohibited list being exported to the
barbarians. They were used to arrest important persons and
escort them to their destination. They were also employed for more
specifically military missions. Thus a group of tribunes and
protectores were in 3 59 entrusted with the task of preparing emer-
gency fortifications along tbe right bank of the Euphrates.
65
Protectores and domestici could, and it would seem normally did,
obtain their commissions by appearing personally before the
emperor and 'adoring the sacred purple': the emperor's verbal
command 'adorato protector' or 'adorato protector domesticus'
required no documentary confirmation. This procedure did not
apply to veterans who were discharged ex protectoribus. These
received a written document (epistula, litterae or testimonialis).
66
Ideally entrants to the corps were soldiers who by meritorious
service had proved their worth, and we know of a number of
ranker protectores, particularly from an early date. V alerius
Thiumpus, who probably lived under Diocletian, served in legion
XI Claudia and in the Lanciarii before becoming a protector, and
Flavius Baudio, a protector who was probably killed in Constantine's
war with Maxentius, had been previously a centurion of legion II
Italica Divitensis. Flavius Marcus served twenty-three years in a
vexillation before being promoted to protector. These examples
come from inscriptions. Ammianus mentions that in 365 Jovian
enrolled Vitalianus, a soldier of the Herul regiment, among the
domestici, and tells how Gratian, the father of Valentinian I, owing
to his remarkable strength and skill in wrestling, was promoted
protector from the ranks. 67
A papyrus furnishes another example. In a petition to the
emperors Constantius and Constans Flavius Abinnaeus tells his
story. 'I was transferred to the vexillation of the Parthosagittarii,
stationed at Diospolis in the province of the Upper Thebaid. But
after the lapse of thirty-three years I was ordered by Senecio,
formerly comes of the frontier of the same province, to escort
refugees of the tribe of the Blemmyes to the sacred footsteps of your
piety at Constantinople. We arrived there with envoys of the
above-mentioned tribe and the comes of the same frontier, and when
they had been presented to your clemency, your divinity ordered
me to adore your venerable purple from the rank of ducenarius.'68
From an early date, however, civi!iat).s were posted to the corps
directly, and tbe emperors, while expressing disapproval of those
who obtained a commission by influence or interest, in practice
THE ARMY
acquiesced in the abuse. The directly commissioned protectores
were often the sons of fathers high up in the service. As early as
3 54 we find Herculanus, son of Hermogenes the magister equitum
who had been lynched in 342, serving as a protector domesticus, and
Jovian, son ofVarronianus, comes domesticorum, had in 363 become
the primicerius of the corps at the age of 3 3 : he can hardly have had
time to serve in the ranks. The sons of German nobles were also
sometimes posted directly into the corps. An inscription records
one Hariulfus, son of Hanhavaldus, of the royal family of the
Burgundians, who was already a protector domesticus when he died
at the age of twenty. But rather humbler folk also found their way
into the corps. Constantius II ordered it to be purged of decurions,
and in 366 Valentinian ordered that former officials of the prae-
torian prefects and provincial governors who were serving as
domestici should be cashiered, except for those who had legally
adored the sacred purple, a privilege reserved to retired corni-
cu!arii of the prefects. 69
In 3 64 V alentinian drew an official distinction between those
who entered the corps after long service and were 'greedy of noth-
ing more than of glory' and those 'who adored the sacred purple by
the interest or favour of the great'. The latter had to pay fees to
the amount of fifty solidi to the senior members of the corps,
while the former were let off with between five and ten solidi.
But he at the same time made the rather surprising concession that
the sons and relatives of domestici were to be enrolled in the corps
as children, and issued with rations at home until of age for active
service. This must have meant that a considerable number of
domestici henceforth started their career in the corps without any
previous service in the ranks. 70
In the fourth century the corps of the protectores and the dom-
estici served as a kind of staff college in which potential regimental
commanders were given practical training and their initiative and
capacity for taking responsibility was tested. It was normal for
members of the corps to be promoted after a few years' service to
the command of a unit. Thus the above-mentioned V alerius
Thiumpus became prefect of Legion II Herculia after five years as
protector, and Flavius Memorius, after twenty-eight years' service
.in the Ioviani and six as protector domesticus was appointed prefect
of the Lanciarii Seniores. Flavius Abinnaeus was also quite soon
promoted. His story continues: 'I was accordingly ordered to
conduct the aforesaid envoys to their native country. I spent
three years with them, and on my return I brought recruits from the
province of the Thebaid to your sacred court, whom I delivered at
Hierapolis. And so, after I had been given my discharge, your
PROTECTORES 639
clemency deigned to promote n;e prefect of the ala at in
the province of Egypt.' Amm1anus records several smillar cases.
The elder Gratian rose rapidly to tribune-and thence to comes
Africae and comes Britanniarum. Vitalian, whom Jo':ian i!l
the domestici in 363, had by 38o become comes rez.mi!ztarzs m Illyn-
cum, and Aelianus, who had led a sortie from ?mgara as
about 3 5o was already a comes in 3 59 Amrruanus, speaking of
himself, that, when Ursicinus was in 3 56 appointed
magister equitum per Orientem, 'the older members of our group
(the domestici serving on Ursicinus' staff) were promoted to com-
mands and we younger ones were ordered to follow him, to
, h d . h bl" . , 71
perform whatever duties e entruste to us m t e pu 1c serv1ce .
The corps must therefore in the fourth century have had a
rapidly changing membership, and it cannot have taken n:any
years to rise to be its primicerius. By the end of the century things
seem to have changed. The domestici by now included many
absentee members, 'who never applied themsel':es to ot;r
service or, seconded to certam offices, executed public orders .
These men were apparently merely waiting f?r automatic
motion by seniority within the corps; for when m 392 Theodosms
ordered them to be cashiered, he conceded that they might apply
for readmission and if they were reinstated within a year or two
would retain seniority; only if they managed through interest
to be restored after a long interval did they lose it, being placed
where they would have been if they had been after
years. This purge wll:s unde.rtaken on t?e pet1t1on of the act1ve
domestici, who were domg the1r duty, and 1t was extended two years
later probably on their request, to the corps of protectores. A letter
Symmachus to Flavian. rev_eals similar in West.
He asks Flavian to invent a JOb m the Suburb1canan provmces for
a client of his the protector V alentinianus, or at any rate to get him
leave of so that he can pursue his domestic avocations
without incurring a disciplinary penalty.
72
Both corps seem by the beginning of the fifth century to have
ceased to be training colleges, whence unit commander_s v:ere
drawn: their members apparently expected to spend the1r hves
within the corps and the of career was to get .to
the top of it and then ret1re. In 414 Hononus granted senatonal
rank (with ;he grade of consu!ares, and without any of the usual
attendant expenses) to the decemprimi of the domestici, that is the
senior members after the primicerius, and two years later Theodosms
II followed suit in the East, and extended the same privilege to the
decemprimi of the protectores. In 432 the honours of the
of the domestici were increased: he henceforth on rece1vmg a
THE ARMY
tribunate ranked as spectabilis with retired duces. It was moreover
provided th.at _if se.nior .decemprimus died before entering on the
office of prtmtcertus, his hem should be consoled by receiving the
emoluments he would have earned had he survived.73
Absenteeism continued to be common. Towards the end of
his reign Theodosius II enacted that those who absented them-
selves without leave for two years should lose five places in senior-
ity: those away for three years lost ten places, and four years'
absence a man to the bottom of the list, while after five years
he was. The corps were evidently well on their way to
becommg, if they had not already become, the ornamental bodies
which were in the six!h century in the East. In the West they
were, like the scholae, pensioned off by Theoderic.74 .
Regil;n;ental. commanders were known as tribunes, prefects or
praepost!t. Tnbune was the commonest title, and was often used
loosely for all commanding officers. It was strictly accurate for the
of the scholae the vexillations, auxilia and legions of
comttatenses and palattnt, and also of the cohorts of the limit-
anei. Prefect was t.he of of legions or
detachments of legwns, vexlllatlons, alae, numert and fleets in the
limitanei. Praepositus to have been strictly the title of a post,
and not a an officer ml(iht the rank of tribune or prefect,
an? be descnbed as or officer commanding', a given
un!t. There were also trtbunt vacantes, who were (temporarily)
without a unit, and served on the staff of the emperor or a general,
and were employed for special duties. J ulian sent one of his
tribuni as envoy (and spy) to the Alaman king Hortarius in
3 59 The tnbunes who, together with protectores, attended Ursici-
nus, when he was sent t<;> Silvanus, were presumably vacantes,
were those who, agam With protectores, supervised the fortifica-
tion of the bank of the Euphrates. Tribuni vacantes are also recorded
in. battle casualties.75
We are told by Lactantius that Constantine attained the rank of
tribunus ordinis primi in the comitatus of Diocletian. There is no
refereJ?-ce to tribunates _be!ng officially graded, but they
?bvwusly very greatly m Importance according to the unit
mvolyed. A tribune of a cohort or a prefect of an ala in the limitanei
far less and less opportunity for distinguishing
himself than the tnbune of a regiment of comitatenses or palatini.
The highest ranking ttibunates were those of the scholae who
fought immediately under the emperor's eye. It was a
OFFICERS
for an officer to be moved, as was Valentinian by J ovian, from the
command of a vexillation of the field army to that of a schola, and
tribunes of the scholae very frequently ended their careers as
magistri militum: Ammianus disapproved of the direct promotion
of Agilo, tribune of the Gentiles and Scutarii, to the senior post of
magister peditum in 3 6o, but only because it missed out several rungs
of the usual ladder.
76
By the beginning of the fifth century the tribunes of the scholae
ranked high in the official hierarchy. They normally received on
appointment the rank of comes primi ordinis, and if so were graded
on retirement as equal in precedence to the comites rei mi!itaris of
Egypt or Pontica. If not awarded the comitiva they still retired with
the rank of duces. They were thus spectabi!es. Other tribunes had by
this time probably acquired the status of c!arissimi, but never rose
higher.
77
Officers were commissioned by the emperor through a written
document (sacra epistula). In the East these documents were
issued for the great majority of appointments and all the important
ones-the scho!ae, the units of the pa!atini, comitatenses and pseudo-
comitatenses and the legions, vexillations and auxi!ia of the !imitanei-
by the primicerius of the notaries. Commissions to tribunates of
cohorts and prefectures of alae in the limitanei were, on the other
hand, issued through the quaestor and the scrinium memoriae. In
4 I 5 the quaestor Eustathius complained that the magistri mi!itum
had for some time usurped the privilege of issuing commissions to
appointments on his list, the !atercu!um minus. As the usurpation
was by now an established custom the emperor compromised and
ordered the restitution to the quaestor of forty appointments.
Nine years later, another quaestor, Sallustius,. returned to the
charge, and was successful in recovering the whole list. The dispute
clearly hinged on the fees which the clerks charged, and implies
that it cost a considerable sum to obtain a commission-apart
from unofficial payments to influential persons who would in-
troduce and support the initial application to the emperor. In the
West there is no record in the Notitia or the Code that either the
primicerius of the notaries or the quaestor was concerned in the
issue of commissions. They were probably issued by the magister
peditum praesentalis, at any rate from the time that Stilicho occupied
that post and so greatly increased its powers. This conjecture is
supported by a story told by Paulinus in his life of Ambrose about
a slave of Stilicho who forged commissions (epistulae tribunatus).
78
In the fourth century the correct, and, it would seem, the normal,
avenue to the tribunate was through the protectorate. But as many
gained direct admission to the domestici and protectores without
THE ARMY
previous long service in the ranks, so also many got commissions
as tribunes without preliminary service in the protectores. Let
Flavius Abinnaeus continue his story. 'But when I sent in your
sacred letter to Valacius the comes (Aegypti) his office replied that
other persons also claimed such letters.' In the last part of his
petition Abinnaeus has tried several variant drafts, but the point
is the same, that the others have secured the appointment by interest
(suffragium), and that he, having obtained it by the emperor's own
decision (iudicio sacro) out of regard for his long service (contem-
platione memoratorum laborum meorum), ought to be preferred to
them.
79
Directly commissioned officers no doubt came from a rather
higher class than directly commissioned protectores, but there is
little evidence on the point. A law of Constantine or Constantius
declares that 'if any civilian or decurion had obtained the honours
of the rank of protector by interest, no length of service is to be
reckoned to his credit after this law. We enact that the same rule
be observed about those who have arrived at praepositurae by
interest.' This allusion to decurions is borne out by Libanius, who
names three Antiochenes who evaded their civic duties by obtain-
ing commands of regiments, but were eventually reclaimed by the
council. Julian made Pusaeus, a Persian officer who surrendered
the post which he commanded, a tribune forthwith, and V alentinian
I appointed Fraomarius, a pro-Roman German king, and two of
his chieftains, direct to the command of units. An inscription records
'J:Ier.aclius, a citizen of Rhaetia II, son of Lupicinus former pro-
vmcral governor, who was praeposttus of the Fortenses and lived
thirty-five years'; the omission of any previous service and the
mention of his father's rank is suggestive. Synesius makes merry
about Cheilas who 'in his old age decided to gain distinction by
military rank; so he has just arrived, having secured the emperor's
to command the . he had apparently
previOusly been manager of a troupe of ffilmes m Constantinople. so
When the domestici and protectores ceased to be the source from
which officers were drawn, commissioned rank was not thereby
cutoff from the rank and file. A constitution of Honorius addressed
to Stilicho still distinguished in 407 between 'those who arrive at
tribunates and praepositurae by influence and interest, and those who
have received such dignities by toil and dangers and in the course
of military service'. The latter were to be immune from unspecified
fees or.cJ:arges.leyied .by comites and Vegetius, writing under
V alentmla?,. d1st1ngmshes a greater tnbune, who 'is appointed
on the dec1s1on of the emperor by sacred letter', and a lesser tribune
who rises by hard work. This obscure statement perhaps means
OFFICERS
that the inferior commands in the limitanei were by now normally
filled by rankers, and that it had ceased in their case to be necessary
to obtain an imperial commission. Alternatively Vegetius may
mean by the 'tribunus minor' the vicarius, or deputy or acting
tribune, who seems normally to have been a senior non-commis-
sioned officer of the unit.
8
1
It was apparently the practice in the fifth century to grant
commissions to aged scholares, but such commissions seem to have
been sinecures which provided a retirement bonus for members of
a favoured-and by this time idle-corps. The promoted scholaris
(or his heirs if he died) was entitled to receive one solidus from each
annona and 'horse money' (caballatio) from his regiment for the
period of his appointment. But we hear of genuine ranker officers
too. The future emperor Marcian, son of a Thracian veteran, who
enlisted in a unit stationed at Philippopolis, rose to be a tribune, and
Saba's father John, who was conscripted in 444-5 into the Isaurian
regiment at Alexandria, ended up as its tribune (with the name of
Conon) about zo years later. John rose, it would seem, by long
service. Marcian's rise was assisted by his being chosen by Aspar,
the magister militum, to be his domestic or aide-de-camp.
82
It is impossible from the available evidence-general state-
ments in the laws and a handful of individual instances-to estimate
what proportion of officers were at any period rankers. It is im-
probable that many private soldiers rose to be generals. We know
of very few. Ammianus mentions four, the elder Gratian, who
became comes Africae and comes Britanniarum, Maurus, the draco-
narius of the Petulantes who crowned J ulian, comes rei militaris in
3 77, Vitalianus, who ended up as comes rei militaris in illyricum,
and Arbetio, who was for long Constantius II's magister equitum
praesentalis. But this was only natural, for tanker officers were
generally elderly men when they received their commissions as
tribunes. Flavius Memorius served twenty-eight years in the
Ioviani and six in the protectores before he was commissioned. He
must have been about fifty-five by then and he was lucky after
three years as prefect of the Lanciarii Seniores to be promoted to
be comes ripae and then comes of Mauretania, in which posts he
passed five years before he retired. There may well, however,
have been a considerable number of elderly soldiers who got
as far as a tribunate and no further, like Flavius Abinnaeus, who
after thirty-three years in the ranks or in non-commissioned
grades, and three more as protector, did eventually end his days as
praefectus alae at Dionysias.8
3
We are ill informed about the emoluments of officers. At the
beginning of the fourth century they still received fairly substantial
salaries in cash. A document records the payment of r 8,ooo
THE ARMY
denarii as stipendium to the praepositus of the equites promoti of
Legio II Traiana on I January 300: this implies an annual salary of
54 ooo denarii, or, at current prices, about a pound of gold. A
l t ~ r document records a stipendium of 3 6,ooo denarii being paid to
another praepositus on I September; but though pay had been
doubled its value was probably no more, if as great. Eventually
the inflation of the denarius swallowed up the cash salary, and
emoluments come to consist in the main, if not entirely, of multiple
annonae and capitus. Domestici by a law of Julian received six
capitus; on the analogy of the pay of non-commissioned officers,
this would imply that they got at least as many annonae and pro-
bably more. Sons of domestici by a law of Valentinian I received
four annonae as children. There are no figures for tribunes. The dux
of Mauretania received fifty capitus as part of his emoluments in
the reign of Valentinian III, and the dux of Libya under Justinian
got fifty annonae and fifty capitus as his basic pay, it would
seem.
84
Whatever officers received, it evidently failed to satisfy them and
they increased their emoluments by appropriating some of what
was due to their men. The authors of the Historia Augusta depict
the rigid disciplinarian Pescennius Niger and the model emperor
Alexander Severus as ruthlessly punishing tribunes who extorted
stellatura from their men. This implies that in the early fourth
century stellatura was a current but illicit abuse. A law of 406
acknowledges and regulates stellatura as a customary right of
tribunes: by it they apparently appropriated seven days' rations
per annum from their men. The Jimitanei had by 443 suffered a
more serious loss. They had to surrender a twelfth of their annonae,
a month's rations per annum; this sum was distributed between the
dux, the princeps of his ojjicium and the praepositi of the forts. A law
of 407 speaks (without disapproval) of annonae which duces and
tribunes take away from the soldiers by way of a gift, and another
of 424 distinguishes the annonae which tribunes, comites or praepositi
of units receive in virtue of their office, and those which duces and
tribunes have acquired in some other way (provided that it is legal)
for their own use.
8
5
Apart from stellatura and the twelfth of the limitanei the laws do
not reveal in what circumstances soldiers 'gave' their rations to
their officers, nor by what legal means officers acquired rations in
addition to their own, but Themistius, in a passage praising Valens'
military reforms, perhaps gives a clue, when he states that now the
regiments of the comitatenses and limitanei are up to their nominal
establishment, and that previously the numbers of the troops had
been diminished in order that the pay of the missing men might
. OFFICERS
become a profit to the officers. Synesius declares that the dux
Cerealis, 'as if it were the law that the pay of the rank and file
belongs to the generals, pocketed what they all used to get and in
return gave them immunity from service, so that they need not
stay in their units, letting them go where each thought he would
make his living'. It may be that in course of time this abuse was
sanctioned by custom-Synesius praises another dux, Marcellinus,
'who neglected the sources of profit which custom has made seem
legal' -and that officers came to be entitled to draw a number of
annonae in the name of men who existed only on paper. In one way
or another the perquisites of an officer had come by the sixth
century to be the major part of his emoluments.8S
It must have been highly inconvenient for an officer to have to
draw daily large quantities of foodstuffs, some of them perishable,
which, even if he had a large family and several slaves, he could
not consume but presumably sold. It is therefore not surprising
that officers began very early, despite prohibitions, to commute
their rations. As early as 3 2 5 Constantine had to insist that tribunes
and praepositi must draw their rations daily, and not leave them to
accumulate and then compel the granary superintendent to buy
them from them. The result was, the emperor explained, that the
granary superintendents or collectors demanded money instead of
foodstuffs in kind from the provincials and that the foodstuffs in
stock deteriorated and either had to be destroyed and replaced by
a second levy on the provincials, or were issued in a mouldy
condition to the rank and file. Valens still insisted in 3 77 that not
only soldiers but those holding dignities (which would include
officers) must draw their rations daily from the storehouses 'or at
any rate within the proper period, that is before the year has
elapsed'.
87
Eventually the government yielded. It was already the rule in
3 64 that officers detached on special duties-the law refers to
protectores at Rome-should receive money in lieu of rations, at the
current market prices. In 406 it was enacted that rations received
by officers as stellatura should be commuted at market rates, and in
407 that those acquired by gift from soldiers should be paid at
fixed prices in money. In 424 officers were given the option of
commuting their basic annonae at market prices, and other annonae
which they had acquired at the standard rate fixed for the troops.
In 439 this rule seems to have been reversed for generals. Hence-
forth they received the annonae and capitus which they drew in
virtue of their rank in cash at the rates of commutation fixed by the
praetorian prefects in their particulares delegationes (which varied
regionally). On the other hand they appear to have drawn other
!ll'
i ~
THE ARMY
annonae and capitus which were their perquisites technically in kind,
actually commuted at more favourable rates. ss
Some officers exploited their men shamelessly. Themistius
that before Valens took matters in hand many of the
frontier troops lacked even arms and uniforms. Libanius in a
speech delivered in 3 8 r gives a sombre picture of the condition
of th.e The soldiers, declares, were hungry, cold and
penmless owmg to the peculatwns of the duces and tribunes who
intercepted what the government provided for them. men
lacked boots: the hor.ses of the were starved to the profit of
the officers. Accordmg to Synesms the dux Cerealis went one
worse: 'I have with me the soldiers of the regiment of the Bala-
gritae. Before Cerealis became commander they used to be mounted
archers, but when he took command their horses were sold and
became just archers.' Cerealis, however, was Synesius'
bete no:re and probably an exceptionally corrupt officer, and the other
two pictures are probably exaggerated. Themistius had to blacken
previous conditions to throw Valens' reforms into relief and
Libanius in this speech is in one of'his most pessimistic m'oods.
Nevertheless such w,ere com.moner than they should have
been. We have Amnuanus authonty for one act of peculation
at the exper:se ?f the tr?ops: When the notary Palladius was sent
m 3. 66 to distnbute their stzpendium or donativum to the troops in
the comes Africae, suggested to the senior non-
officers. of each unit that it would be prudent to
conciliate so high rankmg a personage by allowing him to keep the
greater part of the money. Palladius fell into the trap and fearing
that his peculation would be denounced to the ;eported
favm;rably on Romanus. In the meanwhile the troops were
depnved of most of their money.B9
It is difficult to generalise on the conditions of service in the
Roman army. In so far as the regulations were observed, the men
by no meru:;s of!. They received ample clothing of sound
or later m lieu of it a very reasonable clothing allowance-
which they apparently preferred. Their rations when issued in
kind, were ab';lndant i? .quantity and comprised and wine as
well as the basic necessities of bread and oil: these rations were later
commuted at fair rates. In addition they received at intervals cash
emoluments. They normally, it would seem drew family allow-
ances and, eveJ?- they did not, t?ey rose through
the non-commissiOned grades, mamtam their wrves and children
"MORAJ>E. AND DISCIPLINE
from the extra rations they received. Their standard of living
should have been substantially higher than that of the peasantry
from whom most of them were drawn. This idyllic picture is not
entirely true to life. Some deductions were regularly made from
their rations for the benefit of their officers, and some unscrupulous
officers, at any rate, cheated them of their food, clothing and money
pay. On the other hand, when they were in billets, they habitually
extorted extras from their hosts.
There are indications that some soldiers at any rate were com-
fortably off. Soldiers seem not uncommonly to have bought
and maintained slaves to serve them as batmen. This was a regular
thing in the Guards: Sulpicius Severus comments on Martin's
asceticism in having only one slave batman, whose tasks he shared,
when he was serving as a private in the scholae. In other regiments
non-commissioned officers seem to have normally had a slave
batman or groom. Constantine allowed a recruit who could
furnish two horses or one horse and one slave to be enrolled forth-
with as a circitor in a cavalry regiment, while a document reveals a
senator of an auxilium stationed at Ascalon selling a boy of fourteen
to a biarchus of a vexillation stationed at Arsinoe in 3 59
90
Even privates in ordinary regiments may well have owned
slaves. A law of 349 defines a soldier's family as his wife, children,
and slaves bought from his earnings, and in 406 Honorius, calling
slaves to the colours, especially mentions those owned by soldiers.
Soldiers had, of course, opportunities for obtaining slaves on the
cheap, especially if they were posted near the frontiers. According
to Themistius officers made a regular business of slave dealing, and
other ranks no doubt picked up bargains. But none the less the
maintenance of a slave cost something, and soldiers who kept them
must have had something to spare. Soldiers were also in the habit
of keeping, presumably at their own expense, men of free status-
whom they pretended to be relatives-to serve them as batmen.
In 3 67 Valentinian, suspecting that many of these men were
potential recruits who were thus shirking conscription, ordered
their employers to present them to their unit commanders to be
despatched to the magistri militum for enrolment.
91
Conditions clearly varied between units. At one extreme life
in the scholae must have been very comfortable. Not only were the
men better paid, but, as they served under the immediate eye of
the emperor, they could readily obtain a remedy for their griev-
ances, and their officers did not dare to illtreat them. By the middle
of the fifth century the authority of their commanders was seriously
weakened; in response, evidently, to a petition of the regiments,
the comites scholarum were deprived of their normal right of flogging
THE ARMY
or degrading their senior non-commissioned officers the senatores
and ducenarii, who could henceforth be punished 'only by the
master of the offices. At the other extreme the limitanei, posted in
lonely camps the remote frontiers of the empire, had very little
chance of gettmg a hearing for their complaints, and often were
helpless victims of their tribunes and prefects and of the duces
of the frontier provinces and their officials. 92
The condition of individuals within the same regiment might also
vary Some of_ the men were vagrants or poor coloni, who
had e1ther been conscnpted or had joined up because they had no
other means of subsistence. But others were men who owned a
little property, or at any rate could expect to succeed to it. Sons of
would normally succeed during their period of service to
_fathers' allotments or. capital, if they had not already
mhented them before they Jomed the colours. A certain number of
the conscripts were also peasant proprietors or their sons. Recruits
included even decurions-presumably of the humbler sort but
so owners farms. The conscription 'laws
envisage some recruits owt;mg land<td property, allowing them to
deduct from the their own property amounts equivalent to
the capttatto of the1r WIVes, fathers and mothers if these were dead
or they were unmarried. One law even envisages soldiers owning
agricultural slaves registered on their land. 93
. On the discipline, morale and efficiency of the troops it would be
difficult to make any useful generalisations. They clearly varied
greatly fron; time t'? time llfld between different classes of troops.
C_ode g1ves the 1mpress10n that desertion was widespread. The
maJority of seet;'l, however, as pointed out above, to have
been raw recrmts, sometimes not yet posted to their units. There
appears to have been a wave of desertions in the years following the
battle of Adrianople. At this period most deserters took refuge on
the estates of the. whose agents, chronically short of labour,
yrere _generally willmg to harbour them. In 403, after Alaric's first
mvas10n of Italy, and again in 4o6, after Radagaesus' invasion, the
government had to take strong measures against the bands of
deserters who terrorised the countryside. Apart from these crises,
when morale had been lowered by defeat, desertion seems to have
been on a small scale.94
. D_ur!n& cl?sing of the fourth century a growing laxity
m d1sc1phne IS d1scermble m the armies of the Eastern parts. In 3 84
the goyernment had to declare that officers and men were not at
liberty to ':"ander about the country, but must remain at their
regular stations. In 396 the dux of Armenia was told that persons
who took soldiers into their private service were to be fined five
THE LlMITANEl
lb. of gold. In 398 the government again forbade soldiers to leave
their units and wander about the provinces, and in particular
ordered that men seconded to attend upon the emperor at Con-
stantinople should not be allowed to live in idleness or enter private
service. By the middle of the fifth century discipline had got so
slack that Leo had solemnly to inform Aspar that soldiers, who
were maintained and armed by the state, ought to be occupied with
public duties, and not to devote themselves to cultivating
fields or looking after animals or to commerce. They were m
future not to be seconded to the service of imperial or private
estates but to remain in their units and drill every day.
95
Med who absented themselves in this way for prolonged periods,
if they did not obtain formal leave, probably left with the_ con-
nivance of their officers, who doubtless profited by the transaction-
it was perhaps in such circumstances that men gave their annonae
to their officers. They were apparently not treated as deserters. A
constitution addressed by Honorius to Gaiso, master of the
soldiers, in 413, enacts merely that men absent without leav:e
living idle at their own homes or elsewhere were to lose seruonty,
ten places for one year's absence, twenty for two years, and thirty
for three: if they stayed away for longer they were to be removed
from the rolls, but suffered no further punishment. This law
incidentally indicates that things were as bad in the West as in the
East.
96
In the foregoing account various minor differences have been
noted between the palatini and comitatenses on the one hand and the
limitanei or ripenses on the other, but no radical distinction has been
made between them. This conflicts with the generally accepted
view according to which only the former were regular soldiers,
and ;he latter were a kind of hereditary peasant militia, who cul-
tivated lands allotted to them by the government and performed
guard duties in their spare time. The evidence on which. this v:iew
is based is in fact very slender and there are many considerations
which tell against it. During the fourth century at any rate the
Code reveals no such radical difference between comitatenses and
limitanei and even in the fifth century the limitanei, though lands
were by now to them for cultivation in t_he Eastern
parts-there is _no ev1de?-ce for the Wes:-see:n still. to have
remained orgarused fightmg troops, even if the1r effic1ency had
seriously declined.
For the fourth century the only piece of evidence which can be
THE ARMY
cited in favour of the traditional view is a passage in the Life of
Alexander Severus in the Historia Augusta. Alexander, we are
told, 'gave lands captured from the enemy to the duces and soldiers
of the limes, on condition that it should be theirs if their heirs
served and should never belong to private persons, saying that they
would serve with greater zeal if they were also defending their own
fields. He also gave them animals and slaves, so that they could
cultivate what they had received, to prevent the country near the
barbarian zone being deserted for lack of men or through the
advanced age of its owners.' This statement is fairly certainly not
historical, for the whole Life is a fantasy, a portrait of the ideal
emperor painted for the edification of the monarch to whom it was
dedicated, who is stated to be, and probably was, Constantine.
This passage has been taken to be a reflection of the current
practice of the author's day, but there is no sound reason for
believing this. It is more likely to be a veiled recommendation on
policy to the emperor: its object was apparently to reduce military
expenditure, a matter which the authors of the Historia Augusta
had much at heart.97
The picture does not agree with the evidence of the Code. There
is in the first place no indication that in the fourth century service
in the !imitanci was any more hereditary than service in the com-
itatenses. Veterans' sons in all branches of the army had to serve,
and were drafted either into the comitatenscs or the limitanei accord-
ing to their physical fitness. Recruits raised by the regular con-
scription were also drafted into either branch of the service.
Nor, in the second place, is there any indication that veterans'
allotments were inalienable. Still less is there any evidence that
!imitanei cultivated government allotments during their period of
service. The Code implies that all veterans were entitled to an
allotment or cash bonus on discharge, which in the case of the
Jimitanci would be an odd extravagance if they already held
allotments. The author of a pamphlet addressed to Valentinian and
Valens, mentioned earlier in this chapter, was familiar with the
practice of granting allotments to veterans on the frontiers. One
of the useful by-products of his plan for shortening military service
will be, he says, that there will be more veterans and that they will
be younger men, 'still vigorous cultivators to work the land. They
will populate the frontiers, they will plough the lands which they
had before defended, and having gained the longed-for fruit of
their lapours they will become taxpayers instead of soldiers.' This
author could not state more clearly that it was only on discharge
that soldiers on the frontiers were granted allotments. 98
It is furthermore noteworthy that the government supplied
THE LIMITANEI 651
rations in kind to the limitanci throughout the year until 364, and
thereafter for nine months of the year: rations were apparently not
entirely commuted until early in the fifth century. This seem
to be a costly extravagance, in view of the great difficulties and
expenses of transport, if the !imitanci were growing their food.
And if all !imitanci were provided with viable allotments It would
h
. 99
seem extravagant to pay t em even m money. .
Finally although the units of !imitanci were normally static, they
could if be and often were, converted into regiments of the
field army as ps;udocomitatenscs, and were ever:
into comitatcnscs. A study of the army lists m the Notitia Digru-
tatum shows that such transfers were being made in the West
down to the end of Honorius' reign. These moves would scarcely
have been possible if the limitanci had been a .militia.
100
.
It will be as well at this stage to clear up three side Issues which
might confuse the There in the diocese of Oriens,
especially in the provmces of and Osrhoene, a_nd
in Armenia, adjacent to the Cities of Satala and
public lands classified as !imitotrophi. They are mentioned m laws
dated 386,415,439 and 441, prohibit their alienation or the
alteration of the terms on which they were held. These were,
according to the first law, to provide for the needs of frontier.
The last law, which deals specifically with the Armeman lands,
mentions the provision of supplies in kind, as dues or by com-
pulsory purchase, and of transport services including horses, and
also of 'polemen' (contati)? perhaps ir.regular These
as their title implies, furmshed s.npplies
the frontier
armies and were not lands cultivated by !zmztanct.
In the second place a law dated 398 refers to burgarii in Spain
(and perhaps elsewhere). They wer.e hereditarily tied to. their
service like the muleteers of the public post or the weavers m the
state mllls, and were bound by the same rules as in respect to
marriage inheritance and property. The law occurs m the book of
the devoted to military affairs, and the!r name implies t?at
they occupied or guard b.nt Is no reason to think
that these burgarit were classed as !zmztanct. .
In the third place a law dated 409. reveals that there were m the
diocese of Africa areas of land which had been by the humane
provision of antiquity conceded. to the barbarians (g,cnti!cs) _in
consideration of the care and maintenance of the frontier and Its
fortifications ('propter curam munitionemque limitis atque fossati').
The law orders that they shall not be granted to outsiders do
not fulfil these obligations, but be for
or, if these fail, for veterans. This law must be Interpreted m the
K
THE ARMY
light of the archaeological data, the Notitia Dignitatum, and what
information is available from literary sources. Recent archaeo-
logical surveys have revealed a more or less continuous wall
(jossatttm) running along the desert boundary, and large areas of
irrigated land along it on both sides: these are probably the lands
mentioned in the law. The frontier zone is thickly dotted with
fortified farmhouses, where the occupants of the land must have
lived. In the Notitia the comes Africae commands a large group of
comitatenses, but over half of the infantry (seven legions) and most
if not all of the twenty vexillations appear to have been only
the reign of and to have
previously belonged to the garrison of the African provinces. The
dux of Tripolitania has two units, styled milites. There are no
cohorts or alae or any corresponding units in any of the three
African commands. Instead the dux Mauretaniae, comes Africae and
dux Tripolitaniae have praepositi limitum. Over thirty limites are
recorded; the names are geographicaJ.l
03
Considering these data we may hazard the conjecture that in
Africa the front line of defence was not entrusted to cohorts and
alae and similar regular troops, but to barbarian tribesmen (gentiles)
under the supervision of Roman officers (praepositi), and that the
barbarians who accepted this duty were rewarded with lands along
the frontier. The system was of considerable antiquity; a prae-
positus limitis is mentioned in Tripolitauia in an inscription of the
middle of the third century. From various literary sources it
appears that when the tribes entered Roman service they were
placed under Roman officers (praefecti, tribuni or decuriones); these
were presumably subordinate to the praepositus limitis, who con-
trolled a wider zone. Ammianus mentions a Roman prefect of the
Mazices, who sided with Firmus in his rebellion, and tells how
Theodosius the Elder, as he brought the tribes to obedience again,
installed reliable prefects over them. A law of 405 regulates
judicial appeals from the gentiles and their prefects to the proconsul
of Africa. Augustine in one of his letters speaks of pacified tribes
near the frontier who had within the past few years ceased to have
kings of their own, but had prefects appointed by the Roman
government: many of these tribes had as a result been converted
to Christianity. A correspondent of Augustine raised points of
conscience about the pagan tribe of the Arzuges. These barbarians
took an oath to the tribune or decurion in charge of the frontier
by their pagan gods, and it was because of this oath that land-
owners in the frontier zone and travellers through it couid rely on
them as guards or escorts. Could a Christian accept these services
on such terms ?
104
THE LIMIT ANEI
In Africa then it was not limitanei in the proper sense of the word
that cultivated the state lands along the frontier, but native tribes-
men who served. as a local militia under Roman officers. Similar
arrangements on a very small scale were made in some other
provinces. In Cyrenaica there was, besides the limitanei who
garrisoned the forts, the tribe of the Macae under their prefect,
and among the officers commanding units of limitanei in Pannonia I
there is recorded a tribunus gentis Marcomannorum, while in Raetia
there is another tribunus gentis per Raetias deputatae, presumably a
group of Marcomanni detached from their parent tribe.1os
Service in the limitanei naturally came to be looked down upon,
and they came to be less well treated than the comitatenses. In the
early fifth century Synesius strongly deprecated the transfer of the
Unnigardi, a unit apparently of federates whom he highly esteemed,
to the limitanei. Not only would they descend 'to less honourable
rank', their efficiency would be impaired if they were 'deprived of
their imperial donatives, if they got no remounts, no military
equipment, no expenditure adequate for fighting troops' .
1
0
6
In a Jaw dated 428 Theodosius II excluded Manichees from
all branches of the public service 'praeter cohortalinam in provinciis
et castrensem'. This again shows that service in the limitanei was
held in very low esteem; but it does not necessarily imply that it
was like that of the cohortales compulsorily hereditary. By this time
the government had apparently ceased to call up veterans'
the last law on the topic dates from in the static units of
the limitanei hereditary service seems to have remained customary;
indeed by Anastasius' reign military parentage was a qualification
required for recruits. That service was obligatory on the sons of
soldiers is, however, unlikely; there are no laws debarring the sons
of limitanei from higher branches of the service, as there are for
sons of cohortales .
107
In the early fifth century there is for the first time evidence that
limitanei owned and cultivated land. A Jaw of 42 3 addressed to the
praetorian prefect of the East prohibits the occupation by outsiders
of the territories of the caste/la: they must be held by castellani
milites only, to whom they were allotted in time past. Another law
of 443, addressed to Nomus, the master of the offices in the East,
enacting a thorough reform of the limitanei, in one of its clauses
prohibits the alienation to outsiders of the frontier lands (agri
limitanei), with all water meadows and other rights, which according
to old arrangements the soldiers of the frontier (milites limitanei)
had customarily tended and ploughed for their own profit, free
from all charges.
108
The causes of the change can only be conjectured. The practice
THE ARMY
of granting allotments to veterans seems to have been abandoned
towards the end of the fourth century; it is last mentioned in laws
of V alentinian I. Veteran !imitanei may in compensation have been
allowed to cultivate the territoria which were attached to legionary
and probably other forts. Among the !imitanei it had probably
become normal for sons to be enrolled in their fathers' unit, and it
would often have happened that a son would succeed to his father's
allotment before he reached the age of discharge. In practice
therefore some !imitanei would have worked the land while still on
active service. The majority however were still dependent on their
pay. A law addressed in 43 8 to the magister militum per Orientem
speaks of the limitanei 'who with difficulty repel the pangs of hunger
on their meagre pay', and the law of 443, which speaks of the agri
!imitanei, is insistent the men should receive their full pay (apart
from the legal deduction of the twelfth). The same law enacts that
the number of units must be brought up to their full complement,
and that the officers must drill their men daily. There had evidently
been peculation and negligence in the administration of the
limitanei, but the government still regarded them as regular fighting
troops whose discipline and well-being could and should be
restored.
109
The Roman army of the East as we know it in the sixth century
had grown by a gradual process of evolution from the Eastern
army as depicted in the Notitia Dignitatum and the Theodosian
Code and Novels. Despite certain important changes in its
structure and composition there is a basic continuity. The con-
tinuous existence of individual units is difficult to establish, it is
true, but this is due to lack of evidence. There does not exist for
the sixth century any comprehensive army list like the Notitia, and
we have to rely on casual references in the historians and the legal
texts, where regiments are very rarely named, and in the papyri and
inscriptions, which are likewise sparse. A further difficulty is
caused by the common practice of alluding to regiments not by their
official title but by the name of the town which they garrisoned.
More often than not the Egyptian papyri speak of 'the regiment of
Syene' or 'the regiment of Philae' not only in unofficial but in
official documents. In Italy and Africa after the reconquest
similarly the papyri and inscriptions record the 'numerus Veronen-
sium' or the 'numerus Tarvisianus', or the 'numerus Hipponen-
sium Regiorum'. Identifications are made yet more uncertain by
the desuetude of the old distinctions between different classes of
THE .ARMY OF THE SIXTH CENTURY
unit. The regiments of Syene and Philae are, it is true, occasionally
given their old style title of legion, and an official document of
505 alludes to the Equites Mauri Scutarii as a vexillatio: it is typical
of our difficulties that in this document the unit is not named but
identified by its tribune, who is stationed at Hermopolis, which, we
happen to know from other sources, the Mauri garrisoned. But
almost invariably regiments are spoken of under the colourless
style of numerus ( agtOftor;, or in the literary Greek ua;a.l.oyor; or
;ayfta).Uo
Despite the difficulties a sufficient number of units mentioned in
the Notitia can be identified in the sixth century to establish a
strong presumption of continuity. Some regiments were no doubt
destroyed or disbanded: but of this we have no evidence. A
considerable number of new units were raised in the course of the
fifth and sixth centuries, and particularly under Justinian. Thus an
inscription on the Golden Gate at Constantinople (built in 413)
records not ouly the Corn uti J uniores, an auxilium palatinum listed
by the Notitia in one of the praesental field armies, but the Primo-
sagittarii Leones J uniores, who are unknown to that document.
Late fifth and sixth century papyri from Egypt likewise mention
several new units, the Leones Clibanarii, the Bis Electi, and the
Numidae J ustiniani, and in Italy late inscriptions and papyri record
numeri of the Felices Perso-Armenii and of the Equites Perso-Jus-
tiniani, while in Africa numeri of Electi (as well as the Bis Electi who
are later recorded in Egypt) and of Primi Felices Justiniani make
their appearance. But as against these a fair number of old units
are mentioned by name in Egypt besides the Equites Mauri
Scutarii; they include the Macedonians, that is the old legion V
Macedonica which goes back to the reign of Augustus, the
Armigeri, the Dad, the Scythae and the Transtigritani. The Tertio-
Dalmatae still existed under Justinian in Phoenicia, and the legion
IV Parthica is recorded in Syria under Maurice. The Regii took
part in the reconquest of Italy, and among the units later stationed
there were the Armeni, the Dad, the Felices Theodosiani and the
Primi Theodosiani, all listed in the Notitia.
111
In the structure of command little change was made until
Justinian's day. He divided the huge zone subject to the magister
militum per Orientem, which stretched from the southern coast of
the Black Sea to Cyrenaica, into two commands. A new magister
militum per Armeniam now took over the northern sector, comprising
Pontus Polemoniacus, the two provinces of Armenia I and II and
Armenia Magna and the satrapies beyond the Euphrates. When
Africa was reconquered it was placed under a new magister militum,
whose zone included not only the old diocese but Tingitania and
)1,
31
THE ARMY
the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Italy was similarly placed under
a magister mi!itum, and so were the reconquered parts of Spain. The
magistri of Africa and Italy were in effect governors general of their
areas, with civil as well as military authority. Solomon and
Germanus actually combined the offices of magister mi!itum and
praetorian prefect in Africa, and though there were normally
separate prefects in both Africa and Italy, they were subordinate to
the magistri, who towards the end of the sixth century were accorded
the title of exarchs to mark their all-embracing authority.
An important change was the creation by Anastasius of the
separate military zone of the Long Wall, the line of fortification
which he built from the Black Sea to the Aegaean to protect
Constantinople and the adjacent area. He placed the troops which
garrisoned this zone under a vicar of the magistri mi!itum praes-
enta!es, and also appointed a vicar of the praetorian prefect of the
East to administer the area and see to the provisioning of the
troops. Justinian found that these two officers spent all their
energy in mutual squabbles, and accordingly replaced them by a
praetor of Thrace who combined military and civil authority in
the district of the Long Wall.
On the frontiers the system of duces was maintained with minor
modifications. No change is recorded on the Danube. In the
northern part of the Eastern front, where there were constant
hostilities with the Persians, the number of duces was increased:
in the Armenian sector the front line was moved forward, and the
two duces of Armenia and Pontus replaced by five, further south
new commands were created at Circesium in Mesopotamia and
Palmyra in Phoenice. On the reconquest of Africa duces were
established in all the frontier provinces, Tripolitania, Byzacium,
Numidia, Mauretania and Sardinia. In Italy also duces were in-
stituted after the reconquest to protect the northern frontier.11
2
On the frontiers, where the main task of the army was to repel
external enemies, Justinian consistently maintained the old principle
of separating the military command and the civil admimstration.
In Asia Minor and Egypt, where the principal problem was the
maintenance of internal security, he frequently unified the two.
Though the Isaurians had at last been quelled by Anastasius bri-
gandage was still rife in many parts of Asia Minor, and Justinian
endeavoured to cope with the problem either by combining the
existing military commands-the comitivae of Isauria, Pisidia and
Lycaonia-with the civil government of the areas concerned, or by
bestowing military powers on the provincial governors. In Egypt
there were three problems. The south was constantly troubled by
razzias of the desert tribes, the Blemmyes and the Nobadae.
CATEGORIES OF TROOPS
Throughout the country the great landlords with their bands of
buce!!arii defied the administration. Above all the attempts of the
government to impose Chalcedonian patriarchs and clergy on the
rabidly monophysite population provoked frequent civil dis-
turbances, especially in Alexandria. To cope with the first problem
the dux of the Thebaid had already in the fifth century been given
administrative powers in the extreme south. To deal with the last
the offices of Augustal prefect and dux of Egypt had from time to
time been vested in one person. Justinian made both these changes
permanent, and seems to have extended the principle of a united
civil and military command to all the provinces of Egypt.ll3
The scho!ae still existed in the sixth century, but they had, since
the reign of Zeno according to Procopius and Agathias but
actually considerably earlier, become mere parade ground troops
who graced ceremonial occasions. Places were obtained by
purchase (from retiring guardsmen), and were regarded as a good
investment, the liberal pay providing an adequate return on the
purchase price. Justin (under the inspiration of Justinian) profited
from this situation by enrolling four supernumerary regiments,
comprising 2,ooo men, in addition to the original seven; the
government made a handsome capital profit from the sale of the
newly established places. Later Justinian, when emperor, abolished
the interest on this capital gain by disbanding the new regiments
without compensation-or so Procopius alleges. Justinian also
reduced the expense of the scho!ae by ordering them to the front:
for rather than face active service the guardsmen offered to sur-
render their pay for a stated period. The emperor repeated this
operation several times-for the Persian, African and Italian
campaigns.
114
The protectores domestici and the protectores also still existed, and
also, like the scho!ae, had become purely ornamental corps: some
(the praesenta!es) were stationed at Constantinople, others (presum-
ably the deputati) in Galatia and other places. Menander the
protector in the story of his misspent youth never hints that he had
any military duties. He read for the bar, but soon tired of the legal
profession and wasted his time at the races and the theatre until he
was inspired by the emperor Maurice to take up history. Posts were
obtained by purchase, and as the pay was higher than that of the
scho!ae, commanded very substantial prices. Justinian as a special
privilege allowed the two advocati jisci of the praetorian prefecture
of the East, who retired each year, to buy for two persons of their
THE ARMY
choice places, vacated by death, in the domestici praesenta!es, one
in the cavalry division and the other in the infantry. The price
of such 'dead places' apparently went to the comites domesticorum,
and in this case was specially limited to z,ooo solidi: on the open
market they presumably would have fetched much more. Justinian
played the same trick on the domestici and protectores as on the
scho!ares, ordering them to the front and allowing them to forfeit
their pay in return for being excused.ns
In sixth-century documents a number of soldiers describe them-
selves as protector (or more commonly adorator, as having 'adored
the sacred purple') of their units. This probably means that it was
still, as in the fourth century, the practice to grant deserving
veterans-or perhaps now senior serving soldiers-the honorary
rank of protectores.116
The scho!ae having become an ornamental body, Leo enrolled a
small corps, the excubitores, 300 strong, to do the real work of
guarding the palace. The original members of the corps were
certainly genuine soldiers-J ustin and two other peasants who had
trudged with their bundles on their backs from Illyricum to
Constantinople to enlist were drafted into the newly formed
excubitores on account of their exceptionally good physique-and
so far as we know it remained a crack fighting force. It appears to
have occasionally served at the front: Justin certainly fought in
Anastasius' !saurian war, when he was apparently an excubitor, and
the commander of the corps, the comes excubitorum, served with
Solomon in Africa. The post of comes excubitorum ranked very high
in the military hierarchy, and several of its occupants became
emperor. Justin's elevation was the result of an intrigue, but
Tiberius and Maurice were appointed comites excubitorum as the
final stage in their promotion before being proclaimed Caesars.
By the end of the sixth century individual excubitores were apparently
seconded to assist high military officers abroad. Pope Gregory had
dealings with three. Amandinus, the domesticus (probably of the
exarch), sent him a letter by the excubitor Timarchus, and Gregory
entrusted him with his reply to the exarch. On another occasion
Gregory (by a usurpation of authority which brought down
Maurice's wrath upon his head) ordered an excubitor, with a tribune
and a body of troops, to compel some Italian bishops to come to
Rome. Another, Comitiolus, had died leaving his estate to his
widow and two of his freedmen, who were apparently all in Italy.117
From the reign of Justinian (the earliest mention is in 545) we
hear of officers entitled scribones, who are described as imperial
bodyguards: their high rank is indicated by the title vir magniftcus
which Pope Gregory gives to them. It is uncertain whether they
. CATEGORIES OF TROOPS
were members of an officer corps, analogous to the original
domestici, or were the officers of the excubitores. In favour of the
latter view is the fact that the creation of a new corps of scribones
is not recorded in our sources, and that in 65 3 a scribo in command
of a detachment of excubitores took Pope Martin into custody on
his arrival at Constantinople. Otherwise scribones appear only as
individuals, entrusted with special missions such as the domestici
had in earlier times performed. The scribo Anthinus was sent to
Rome to arrest Pope Vigilius in 5 46, and half a century later two
others, Marcus and Azimarchus, were despatched to Italy to arrest
Gregory, the ex-praetorian prefect. Metrianus was in 55 5 sent with
a high officer of state, Athanasius, to hold an enquiry into the
murder of the king of Lazica. Another went later with a senator as
envoy to the chagan of the Avars. They were also sent out to
collect recruits; Gregory instructed the local agent of the papal
estates to give a suitable douceur to the scribones sent with that
mission to Sicily. They distributed their pay to troops in outlying
provinces; Busas, sent by Maurice to Italy for this purpose, also
carried a present of 30 lb. gold from the emperor to Gregory.
On another occasion a scribo, Bonosus, was charged with equipping
a fleet.
118
The comitatenses also continued to exist; the distinction between
them and the pa!atini seems to have lapsed. They are not very
easy to distinguish from other troops as the title comitatl!nses is
rarely used. They are usually described as 'soldiers' ( areaniiirm)
or 'Roman soldiers', par excellence; and their regiments are simi-
larly the tiumeri (in Procopius' Greek "aT<i?.oyot). They comprised,
as we have seen, many units which had survived from the fourth
century, also a number of new units raised in the fifth and sixth
centuries. They were as a general rule recruited from Roman
citizens, but individual barbarian recruits were accepted; Procopius
mention the desertion of twenty-two Roman soldiers who were
barbarians by race from a regular cavalry regiment and on another
occasion notes that of a body of r,6oo regular cavalry (aTeaniiiTat
lnnelc;) the majority were Huns, Sclaveni and Antae. Justinian
formed a number of ethnic units from prisoners of war and
deserters. He enrolled the Vandal prisoners whom Belisarius
brought back to Constantinople in five cavalry regiments which he
entitled Justiniani Vandali and prudently stationed in the East.
Conversely units formed from oriental prisoners and deserters were
drafted to the West. A trooper of the cavalry unit of the Perso-
J ustiniani is buried at Grado in Italy, and a soldier of the Felices
Perso-Armenii is recorded at Ravenna in 591; his name, Tsitas,
shows that he was a genuine Armenian.
119
li
66o THE ARMY
Procopius often seems to distinguish from the regular or Roman
regiments Isaurian, Thracian, lliyrian and Armenian troops. In
other passages, however, he speaks of such troops as regulars
( areanonat). It seems unlikely that there was any official dis-
crimination between troops raised from these areas and from the
rest of the empire, and from Procopius' rather imprecise language
it would appear that he is making a de facto distinction between
ordinary regiments, which were, as we shall see, normally recruited
in the area in which they were stationed, and regiments
levied, often for a particular war, from the best recruiting grounds
of the empire, which were Thrace and Illyricum, and eastern Asia
Minor; the name Isaurian was used to cover other mountaineers of
the Taurus, such as Lycaonians and Cappadocians. Many of the
in which the distinction is made concern recruiting
campaigns, and contrast already existing regiments which were
moved to the front with regiments formed from new recruits,l20
The comitatenses were still in theory, and to a considerable degree
in practice, mobile troops. Belisatius' expeditionary force against
the Vandals included ro,ooo regular infantry, and about r,joo
regular cavalry. The force with which he started the Italian cam-
included, besides 3 ,ooo Isaurians, a number of other regular
regiments : one of them, the Regii, is recorded by name, and, as
we have seen, other units of the praesental armies of the East, the
Felices Theodosiani and the Ptimi Theodosiani, the Daci and the
Armeni, are later found stationed in Italy. Units from the regional
field armies of Thrace and Illyricum were also transferred to Italy
as reinforcements from time to time. The Bis Electi are recorded
first in Mrica and then in Egypt, and the Numidae Justiniani, who
must have been raised in Africa, were later moved to the Thebaid,l21
(1. l.arge number of regiments of comit_atenses were however by
time more or less permanently stationed as garrisons in the
of the empire, particularly in the frontier provinces as a
to the limitanei.. The practice. had probably begun early
With regiments of the regional field armies, but a law of Anastasius
shows that by his time there were units not only of the Oriental but
of the praesental armies under the command of the duces of the
E;astern limes, and apparently permanently posted in their pro-
vmces.122
Egypt provides some specific examples. Saba's father Conon
spent the whole of his military career, from his enrolment in
444-5 to his death in 491, in the Isaurian regiment at Alexandria.
This was not a unit of the limitanei, but presumably legion I Isaura
of the Oriental regional field army, unless it was a new
formation raised after the date of the Notitia. The papyri show that
. CATEGORIES OF TROOPS
66r
the Armigeri, no doubt the Equites Armigeri Seniores Orientales
of the same army, were garrisoning Oxyrhynchus in 488, and that
the Scythae, in the Notitia a palatine legion in one of the praesental
armies, were stationed in the Thebaid in the sixth century. At
Arsinoe in 53 I we find Flavius Menas, a soldier of the Daci, making
a loan of I 2 solidi to Flavius Menodorus, a centenarius of the Leones
Clibanarii; the deed is witnessed by a soldier of the Transtigritani.
The Daci were a palatine legion of one of the ptaesental armies, the
Leones Clibanatii a new unit posterior to the Notitia, and the
Transtigritani a legion of the Oriental regional army. The loan was
to be repaid by annual instalments of two solidi, which implies that
the lender did not expect either his own or the borrower's unit to
be marched off suddenly to the front. And he had good ground for
this belief. The Transtigritani had been stationed at Arsinoe since
at least 498, and the Leones Clibanarii since at least 487.
123
Outside Egypt there is less evidence, but Anastasius' regulat!ons
for the limes of Libya Pentapolis show that the regular gamson
comprised five regiments (aet8Jwl) of comitatenses in addition.to the
castrensiani, and Justinian in Edict XIII speaks of regular regiments
ofLibyes Justiniani and Paraetonitae Justiniani under the command
of the dux of Lower Libya. In Phoenice Libanensis the same em-
peror placed the Tertio-Dalmatae, a ve?llation of the field
army of the Orient, at the permanent disposal of the CIVil governor
and stationed a regular regiment at Palmyra to reinforce the
limitanei. In Palestine he placed at the disposal of the proconsul a
regiment of comitatenses ( arganwnxoc; xaral.oyoc;), drawn from the
standing garrison (arganwriiiv riiiv lyxaOru;,evwv rfj xweef). He also
posted what Malalas calls 'a regiment of Roman soldiers, or Italians,
called Spaniards', to Bosporus in the Crimea.
124
The limitanei also continued to exist. Justinian included in the
Code large sections from the constitution of 443. The .of
the offices was still to report annually on the strength of thelt uruts
and the state of their forts; their duces were to drill them daily and
to keep their forts in repair; their lands were not to be alienated.
Limitanei ate recorded on all the frontiers. They were among the
troops on the lower Danube for whom the quaestor exercitus had to
cater; the law creating the office contained a schedule (which has
not been transmitted to us) of the annonae of both the comitatenses
and limitanei of Moesia and Scythia. On the Eastern frontier they
ate mentioned by John Malalas in Armenia and in Phoenice.
Justinian also alludes to them in Palestine. Legio IV Parthica,
which according to the Notitia garrisoned it;.
had by Maurice's reign been moved to Beroea m Sy_na, It
distinguished itself in action. According to Procopius J ustm1an
GGz
THE ARMY
allowed the pay of the !imitanei on the Eastern frontier to fall four
or five years into arrear, and on making peace with the Persians
compelled them as a thank-offering to forego the pay due to them
for a stated period. In Libya Pentapolis Anastasius in 501 issued
regulations defining the duties of the castrensiani and fixing the
fees which they had to pay to the ojftcium of the dux. They had to
guard the roads and prevent any Roman or Egyptian from visiting
the barbarians without an official pass; they themselves were not
to visit the barbarians to make compulsory purchases of foodstuffs
or to have commercial dealings with them. Each fort had to pay
four solidi a year to the ducal ojftcium for drawing up the four-
monthly returns which had to be sent in to Constantinople, and one
solidus for the papyrus required.125
It is as usual from Egypt that we have the most detailed informa-
tion. A detachment of 'Macedonians' was stationed at Antaeopolis
in the Thebaid in Justinian's reign: their parent unit was probably
Legio V Macedonica, stationed accordin$ to the Notitia at
Memphis. At Hermopolis the Equites Maun Scutarii are recorded
continuously from the fourth to the sixth century (in 340, 417, 507
and 53 8). An undated document, in which a soldier of this unit,
Flavius Donatiolus, is revealed as leasing ten arurae of arable land
from Aurelia Charito of Hermopolis, suggests that discipline
was rather slack.126
The most revealing set of documents are the family papers of
Flavius Patermuthis, son of Menas, who served in the regiment
( aetOpJH;) of Elephantine for more than twenty-five years-he is
first stated to be a soldier in 58 5 and still was one in 6 r 3. The
parties and witnesses in the transactions are in the overwhelming
majority non-commissioned officers and men of the three regiments
of Syene, Philae and Elephantine, which suggests that most of the
propertied and literate male inhabitants of these towns were
enrolled in their garrisons. The regiments are never named in the
documents, but those of Syene and Philae are sometimes styled
legions, and the fact that their non-commissioned officers held the
grades of ordinarii and centurions suggests that they were !imitanei.
The legion of Philae was doubtless Legio I Maxiruiana, recorded
at Philae in the Notitia. That of Syene may have been the Milites
Miliarii, classified among the legions and located at Syene. At
Elephantine the Notitia records only the cohort I Felix Theo-
dosiana.127
Patermuthis is described or describes himself in the documents
indifferently as 'soldier of the regiment of Elephantine' or 'boatman
of Syene', and sometimes with engaging frankness as 'soldier of the
regiment of Elephantine, by profession a boatman'. The dossier
contains only one document of military import, the probatoria
whereby one Flavius Patern;mthis, son of Dios, was enrolled in the
regiment of Elephantine in 5 78; it is not clear how it came into the
hands of Flavius Patermuthis, son of Menas-perhaps he was a
relative. The other papers are all loans, sales of boats, conveyances
of house property, wills and settlements, likewise concerned with
boats and houses, and records of litigation, in which Flavius John,
son of Jacob, Patermuthis' brother-in-law, figures prominently.
He too is described as 'a soldier of the regiment of Syene, by origin
of the same Syene, a boatman by profession'; he was already
enrolled in 58 3, but is still described as a recruit (cetewv) in 5 84-5.
128
The papers suggest that the !imitanei of the Thebaid did not take
their military duties very seriously. But in this they were rivalled
by the comitatenses who had become static garrisons. In 5oS a
soldier of the Transtigritani leased a bakery from a soldier of the
Leones Clibanarii. John Moschus knew of a pious soldier of
Alexandria, named John, who used every day to sit weaving baskets
and praying from dawn to the ninth hour, and then (at 3 p.m.) used
to put on his uniform and go on parade; this he did for eight years
without apparently exciting any adverse comment from his
commander.
129
Despite their deficiencies Justinian considered !imitanei of suffi-
cient value to wish to reconstitute them in Africa. He sent
Belisarius the establishment of a regiment of !imitanei, and ordered
him to recruit sturdy provincials or ex-soldiers of the Vandal
kingdom and post regiments on this model to garrison the frontier
forts. They were to be allotted lands to cultivate, but also to receive
pay from the duces and their ;vere to make no
tions for the1r own profit. It was J ustm1an s hope that the !tmtfanez
would be able to deal with local disturbances without help from the
comitatenses .
130
In addition to the formations described above, inherited from
the fourth century, the army of the sixth century itlcluded units of
what were called federates (<potbSQa'tm). The meaning of this term
had however changed. Justinian did employ federates in the old
sense, contingents supplied under treaty by allied tribes, either
outside the empire or settled on lands within the frontier. Pro-
copius mentions at various times such contingents of Huns, Heruls,
Gepids and Lombards from the Danubian lands, Moors from the
Sahara and Goths from the Crimea. They were summoned for
particular campaigns, and served under their own native chieftains.
But these contingents are now styled 'allies' (aVf'f'axo<).
131
Procopius comments on the changed meaning of the term
federates. In the old days, he explains, it meant free barbarians, and
11
THE ARMY
barbarians only, serving under treaties (<pot!Jeea), like the Goths in
the late fourth century. Unfortunately he does not explain what
precisely the term meant in his own day, merely saying that anyone
might now be enrolled under that name. In the context this might
mean that any barbarians (and not only those of federate tribes)
might serve, or that not only barbarians but Roman citizens were
admitted. The implication is, at any rate, that most federates were
still barbarians, and this is borne out by another passage in which
he states that many of the Heruls (a federate tribe in the old sense
which from time to time supplied contingents of 'allies') 'have
become soldiers of the Romans, enrolled in the so-called federates'.
Justinian also remarks that 'we often enrol Goths in the devoted
federates' .
132
The status and organisation of the new style federates are in many
points obscure, but it is clear that they were regular troops. Pro-
copius associates them closely with the 'soldiers', sometimes
classifying them as such, sometimes distinguishing them from
'soldiers' in the technical sense of comitatenses. Justinian in a law
prohibiting soldiers from taking up leases of land defines the term
as including the scho!ae, those who served under the magistri
mi!itum, and the federates. In a later law, while distinguishing
'soldiers' (comitatenses) from federates, he forbids both alike to take
service under private persons, and threatens both with the same
penalties, expulsion from the service or death. In yet another law
in which he lays down the conditions under which wives may
presume the death of their husbands on active service, the regula-
tions apply to the schofae, the 'soldiers' and the federates.133
The federates were enrolled in regiments (r&yftaTa): in general
remissions of arrears the accounts of regiments of 'soldiers' and
federates which were undergoing audit were excepted. When on
active service they were commanded by regular Roman officers.
But both in Procopius and in the laws a distinction is often
drawn between the numeri (uaTa},oyot, aet0f1ol) of the comitatenses
and the federates. The latter appear to have been administratively
controlled by their paymasters (optiones). One law speaks of 'those
who are adorned with the tide offederates under various paymasters'.
Another orders that 'soldiers' be returned to their numeri, federates
to their paymasters. A third law directs the wife of a 'soldier' to
obtain verification of his death from the priores and chartularies (or
if he is not absent the tribune) of his regiment, but the wife of a
federate to make enquiries of his paymaster.134
From all this it emerges that federates were in the main barbarians
(though Romans were probably accepted). They seem to have
been volunteers, individually recruited, and signed on as regular
soldiers. They received pay like the comitatenses, and were subject
to the same disciplinary rules as they: a minor exception was that
Gothic federates were allowed to practise their Arian cult. They
were grouped in regiments, which were technically not ranked as
regular numeri and were administered by optiones. They do not
appear to have had established tribunes, but when on active service
were placed under the command of regular Roman officers.
Similarly they were normally not under the command of the
magistri mifitum, but when on active service were subject to the
magister in charge of operations. They were perhaps when not on
active service under the authority of a high ranking officer styled
the comes Joederatorum, but the history and character of this office
are most obscure. According to late and unreliable sources Areo-
bindus held the office under Theodosius II and Patriciolus under
Zeno or Anastasius. It is first firmly attested in 548-9 when Justin-
ian appointed Artabanus magister mi!itum in praesenti and comes
joederatorum concurrendy. Federates were mainly used in the field
armies for active operations, but some were stationed in frontier
provinces; the dux of Palestine had federates as well as !imitanei
and comitatenses under his command. They appear, on our evidence,
to have been exclusively cavalry.135
The origin of this system of what may be called foreign legions
can only be conjectured. According to Olympiodorus 'the term
buce!farius was in the days of Honorius applied not only to Roman
soldiers but to some Goths too, and similarly the term federates
was applied to a mixed and various horde'. This may mean that the
word federate was used not only for tribal contingents serving
under a treaty, but for mixed bands of barbarians who collected
around a notable warrior like Sarus, and were by him put at the
disposal of the government. It also seems to be implied that such
bands were also called buce!farii. A law of Honorius dated 4o6,
which invites to the colours slaves, especially those of soldiers, and
of Joederati and dediticii, probably refers to federates of this type.
The Roman government could hardly have expected allied tribes to
surrender their slaves, but might have demanded this of casual
barbarian bands in their pay. The distinction between Joederati and
dediticii may be between volunteers serving under contract and
prisoners of war or deserters who had been embodied in similar
bands.
136
Similar federate units seem to have existed in the East at the
same period. Synesius implies that the Unnigardi were 'allies', by
which he presumably means federates, and they were certainly
barbarians; indeed except under the command of so able an officer
as Anysius their loyalty and discipline would have been doubtful.
!I
666 THE ARMY
But they were not only commanded by Roman officers but
received horses ar:d arms .and pay the Roman go'vern-
ment. A cunous story m the L1fe of Daruel the Sty lite shows that
the Eastern government to make use of such groups.
The emperor Leo, we are told, mv1ted from Gaul a notable warrior
named Titus with his band of barbarians, and honoured him with
the title of comes. On his arrival he sent him to Daniel to receive
his blessing, with the unfortunate result that Titus decided to be-
come a hermit, and paid off his barbarians (called in the narrative
buce!larit). Such bands of so-called federates must have been put
permanently on the payroll, kept up to strength by the recruitment
of b.arbarian and gradually brought under the
of paymasters and subjected
to Roman discipline, until they ultimately emerged in the sixth
century as regular foreign legions.I37
While the term joederati came to denote these barbarian soldiers
on the payroll of the imperial government, the rival term buce!!arii
came to mean military retainers employed by private individuals.
The practice traced back to the end of the fourth century,
when IS sa1d to have had a large barbarian bodyguard as
praetotlan prefect of the East. Several masters of the soldiers-
Stilicho and Aetius in the West and Aspar in the East-are also
to. possessed . private bodyguards, and
pnvat.e md1v1duals .also mamtamed them-Valerian, a wealthy
decunon of Emesa, m 444 overpowered the governor of Phoenice
Libanensis with his 'great horde of barbarians'. Leo in 476 forbade
private landowners to maintain gangs of armed slaves, buce!!arii or
Isaurians, but the practice, though illegal, remained common
among great territorial magnates like the A pion family of Egypt.
Among officials. it was apparently connived at, but few
had bod1es of that John the Cap-
padocran was exceptional among praetor!an prefects in possessing
a bodyguard of several thousand.ras
Among military officers the practice was officially sanctioned, as
is shown by the .fact that their buce!!arii swore an oath of allegiance
not only to their employer but to the emperor. These officially
recognised.private retainers of generals are relevant to our present
purpose, smce they often formed a quite substantial part of the
expeditionary forces which their employers commanded and were
used just like regular troops. Their numbers naturally varied
according to the wealth and standing of their employer and his
character. who was very rich and lavish in temperament,
had at one yme as many as 7,ooo. The parsimonious Narses was
content with under 4oo. Between these extremes Valerian
,
magister mi!itum of Armenia,, had over r,ooo, whom he took with
him as reinforcements when posted to Italy. Lesser commanders
also had their smaller bands.I39
Buce!!arii were recruited from Romans and barbarians alike;
Procopius mentions Armenians, Cilicians, Cappadocians, Pisidians,
Isaurians and Thracians, and from outside the empire Huns and
Persians. In a great household, like that of Belisarius, they had a
commander-in-chief, the majordomo (hpeauJx; ol"tq.), and a
paymaster (optio). They were divided into officers (!Joevroeo<) and
privates The men served not only as the commander's
guard, but as troops of the line in battle, and detachments of them
were often used, by themselves or in conjunction wth regular units,
for special operations of importance. Their officers were frequently
entrusted with such independent missions, either on their own or
accompanying a regular officer; they might occasionally be put in
command of regular troops. They were sometimes promoted to be
regular officers. Paul the Cilician, Belisarius' majordomo, was
later tribune of a cavalry regiment, and Belisarius himself had
started his career as a buce!!arius of Justinian when he was master
of the soldiers. Another of Justinian's buce!!arii, Sittas, became
magister mi!itum of Armenia, and yet another, Chilbudius, magister
mi!itum of Thrace.I40
Such was the structure of the army of Justinian. The relative
strength of its various elements is impossible to estimate, for we
have no figures either for the !imitanei, or for the comitatenses who
with them garrisoned the provinces. It can however be asserted
that Romans greatly predominated not only in the army as a whole,
but in the expeditionary forces, where alone barbarians, whether
federates or allies, were used on any considerable scale. The force
which conquered Africa comprised about II,joo comitatenses,
3,5oo federates and r,ooo Herul and Hun allies, with an unknown
number of buce!!arii, who seem to have been for the most part
Romans. The army which invaded Sicily and Italy included,
besides an unknown number of buce!larii, 3,ooo Isaurians and 4,ooo
other regulars, both comitatenses and federates, and only 5 oo Hun
and Moorish allies. It was reinforced next year by 4, 8oo comitatenses,
including 3 ,ooo Isaurians and 8oo Thracians, in the year following
by 5 ,ooo comitatenses and 2,ooo Heruls, and in 5 42 by Thracian and
Armenian regulars together with a few Huns. Later some regular
regiments were transferred from Illyricum to Italy and in 544
Belisarius brought with him 4,ooo men, some of whom were old
regulars, but the majority new recruits from Thrace.
14
I
The force collected by Germanus in 549-50 for Italy comprised
the army of Illyricum and some regular regiments from Thrace,
L
668
THE ARMY
as well as new recruits raised in Thrace and Illyricum, together with
a band of Herul allies and many casual barbarian recruits. In 55 2
Narses took over this force, and added to it a large body of regulars
from Constantinople: he also raised many men from Thrace and
Illyricum. But he had to rely more on barbarians. Auduin, king
of the Lombards, provided a contingent of 2, 5 oo warriors, who
were accompanied by over 3,ooo retainers, and the Herul:s- over
3,ooo cavalry. Other miscellaneous barbarian troops included a
body of Persian deserters under a grandson of the Great King, and
two free-lance bands of Gepids and Heruls; both these were small,
the Gepids numbering only 4oo. Under thestressofthelong-drawn-
out Gothic war Roman manpower had to be increasingly supple-
mented by barbarians, but contingents from allied tribes were in
general very sparingly used, and the federate regiments seem to
have been a small minority of the regulars.142
The enrolment of recruits was rigorously centralised by Zeno.
Hitherto the magistri mi!itum and the duces had been allowed to issue
the probatoriae. Now Zeno enacted that all probatoriae, not only for
the comitatenses but for the !imitanei, were to be issued from the
imperial scrinia. The magistri and duces were to notify the emperor
of the precise number of vacancies in eacll unlt to be filled, and
probatoriae would be sent out accordingly.143
In the system of recruitment there had been a complete change
since the early fifth century. The compilers of the Justinian Code
preserved the laws prohibiting the enrolment of certain classes-
slaves, co!oni adscripticii, curia!es and cohorta!es. But they carefully
eliminated all laws relating to the hereditary obligation of soldiers'
sons to serve, and all references to conscription. The conclusion
seems inescapable that recruitment was entirely voluntary in
Justinian's day. This is borne out by what little we know from
other sources. In 544 Belisarius 'went round the whole of Thrace,
handing out money lavishly, and collected volunteer recruits'. In
549 Germanus, 'by handing out without stint the large sums he had
received from the emperor, and more from his own pocket, was
easily able in a brief space to collect a surprisingly large army of
good fighting men', malnly. from Thrace and Illyricum. To raise
men for the expeditionary forces it was evidently the practice to
conduct recruiting campaigns, offering attractive bounties, in
certain areas, notably the Balkans and eastern Asia Minor.
144
Normal recruiting for the static units of comitatenses seems, on
the Egyptian evidence, which is all we have, to have been local.
RECRUITME.NT AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE 669
The names of soldiers serving in Egypt are often distinctively
Egyptian, and if they are not, belong to. the common stock of
names usual throughout the Eastern provmces. In the rare cases
where a man's origin is stated, it is the where he was stationed;
thus in a document dated 5 o8 two Arsmmte brothers are recorded
as serving in the and the Leones
units stationed at Arsmoe. Service was, no doubt, often m practice
hereditary; a Ravenpate document of 639 reveals that
a soldier of the Armenii, was son of Stephanus, the late przmtccrtus
of the regiment of Verona. The local and hereditary of
military service was even more marked among the !ttmfanez. Dios,
the grandfather ofPatermuthis' wife Caco, is de.scribed as a boatman
only, but this is no proof that he was not a soldier He bror;ght
up his eldest son Jacob in his own trade! but also paid one
for his enrolment fee (cneauvmpAv). His other two sons, VIctor
and Paeion, were under age when he died, but seven Y:ears later
Flavius Paeion, son of Dios, witnesses a deed as a soldier of the
regiment of Syene. Jacob's son John, Caco's brother, was both a
boatman and a soldier of the same unit.
145
We possess two official documents to the enroln;ent of
!imitanei. One is a very verbose letter (m Greek) from the przores of
the regiment of Elephantine to Flavius Patermuthis, son of Dios,
newly enrolled recruit of the sameunit, informing him that they have
received his probatoria (with others) from the Augustal dux of the
Thebaid, instructing them to enrol him from January rst next (5 79).
The other is a letter addressed in 505 (in Latin) by the dux of the
Thebaid to the tribune at Hermopolis, informing him that in
accordance with the emperor's orders to enrol recruits
in the regiments to bring them up to strength, he has
Heracleon son of Constantinius, of Hermopolis, to serve m the
addressee'; vexillation (the Equites Mauri). The tribune is to have
Heracleon' s name entered on the roll of the regiment and see that
his annonae are paid to him from give?. that.
comes of military stock (ex genere orztur mi!ztarz) and Is not a cu;za!ts
or a praesida!is (i.e. cohorta!is) or censibus adscriptus, or physically
unfit and has attained the age of eighteen. The negative clauses
wer; no doubt common form, and hardly necessary in this case, as
if the man were of military family he could not well be a curialis,
cohortalis or eo/onus adscripticius. The positive condition suggests
that service in the limitanei was now restricted to descendants of
soldiers, but was a privilege rather than an obligation.
146
..
The revolution in recruitment is a surprising one. Military
service had not been made more attractive since the fourth century;
the pay was no better, and abuses were as rampant. The army may
THE ARMY
have been smaller, but the proportion of barbarians seems to have
been less than in the middle years of the fourth century, and
markedly less than in the late fourth and early fifth. Yet Justinian
was able to keep numbers up, and probably increase them, without
resorting to conscription. It may be that economic conditions
were worse, and that there was a large reservoir of unemployed or
underemployed men, particularly landless peasants, on which to
draw. But the revolution was partly due to a change of policy.
Now that recruitment for the static units, both of the limitanei
and of the comitatenses, was local, men no doubt came forward more
readily, knowing that they would not be torn from their homes and
posted to some distant province, but could look forward to a not
too strenuous or dangerous career in familiar surroundings. For
the genuine field armies the government drew not only upon Thrace
and Illyricum, lands of sturdy peasant proprietors which had been
since the early Principate among the most important recruiting
grounds of the empire, but on eastern Asia Minor. Here there was
splendid fighting material, but it had been neglected down to
the middle years of the fifth century, and the poverty-stricken
mountaineers had been left to maintain themselves by brigandage.
Theodosius II seems to have begun the policy of recruiting Isaur-
ians, and Leo and Zeno pursued it on a large scale. The warlike
spirit of the mountaineers was thus directed into a useful channel,
and the army assured of a steady flow of good recruits.
The accession donative still stood at the traditional amount
of five solidi and I lb. of silver, except that Tiberius Constantine
paid the whole sum in gold-nine solidi. The quinquennial
donative stood at five solidi under Anastasius. If Procopius is to
be believed Justinian suspended its payment, and it fell into desue-
tude, but it is hardly credible that so drastic a reduction could have
been made without raising violent protests which would have been
recorded by other contemporary writers. A possible explanation
of Procopius' statement may be that Justinian rationalised the pay
system by converting the quinquennial donative into an annual
payment of one solidus a year and amalgamating it with the com-
mutation for annoita. The annona was commuted for four solidi in
Africa in the middle of the fifth century, and the same computation
recurs in Egypt under Justinian for cash annonae ( ai lv xevmj)
&w6vat) paid to officers. In Africa however Justinian computes
annonae at five solidi in the salary scales of civil servants.
There is no trace by this date of any annual cash stipendium,
but soldiers by now received regular (in theory no doubt annual)
cash allowances for uniform and arms. This emerges clearly from
Theophylact's account of an attempted reform by Maurice, who
RECRUITME.NT AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE
proposed to divide the emoluments of soldiers into three parts,
uniform, arms and gold coin. This attempt to restore issues in kind
caused violent resentment in the army, which suggests that soldiers
did not spend their allowances in full on equipping themselves.
Its motive was apparently mainly economy, but no doubt also
efficiency: hitherto the treasury had paid out in allowances more
than was absolutely necessary for equipment, and the soldiers were
ill armed and clad. That arms were no longer a free issue is also
implied by Procopius' praise of Belisarius' generosity in replacing
arms lost in battle by his men at his own expense; if the soldier
drew a regular arms allowance and equipped himself, he obviously
would suffer financially by losing his arms. Procopius also mentions
horses in the same connection. The issue of horses had long been
commuted, and the commutation had, it would seem from this
passage, become a fixed cash allowance.
147
This does not mean that the supply of clothing, arms and horses
was left entirely to private enterprise. The state clothing factories
still operated, and the law of 42 3, whereby they provided uniforms
in kind to recruits and private soldiers, is preserved in the Justinian
Code. Imperial stud farms are mentioned in Thrace and in eastern
Asia Minor, from which horses were supplied to the army, presum-
ably for free issue to recruits, and perhaps for purchase by serving
troopers who reqnired remounts. The imperial arms factories also
contmued to function. Leo laid down careful regulations for the
transport of consignments of arms, by ship or wagon, from the
factories. Justinian, in the interests of public security, made the
manufacture of arms an imperial monopoly. No private citizen
might henceforth make or sell arms, and private armourers were to
be enrolled, if suitable, in the imperial factories. The armourers,
styled deputati, attached to each regiment, were to confine them-
selves to repair and maintenance work, and so were the corps of
ballistarii which the emperor had established. in various cities for
defensive purposes. Arms illicitly produced or sold were to be
confiscated, and all arms were to be stored either in the imperial
arsenal (-rd Oelov c!.eftdf'ev-rov) or in the public armouries (brJft6atat
J:nJ.oOijxat) established in certain cities, apparently for issue to the
citizens in case of hostile attack. If these regulations were kept,
soldiers could have bought their arms only from the state.148
As a general rule limitanei seem to have received allowances in
cash in lieu of rations and fodder, but the system may have varied
on different frontiers. In Palestine full commutation had been
introduced before 409, and in Libya Pentapolis the castrensiani
apparently bought their food by compulsory purchase-they were
forbidden to visit the barbarians for this purpose. On the other
THE ARMY
hand the Code preserves an old law regulating the transport of
foodstuffs to the more distant forts on the frontiers-the men were
still entitled to delivery of two-thirds at their forts, but had to carry
the remaining third themselves.
1
4
9
The comitatcnscs probably in principle received rations and
fodder in kind. A proportion of the land tax was still under
Anastasius and Justinian assessed in foodstuffs for the consumption
of the army. Anastasius so arranged the assessment that sufficient
supplies should be available from this source, except in the diocese
of Thrace, where, as he explains, owing to the devastated state of
the country the taxes in kind were insufficient to feed the numerous
troops stationed there. In Thrace accordingly compulsory pur-
chase, forbidden elsewhere except for emergencies by special im-
perial order, was permitted as a regular practice. Supplies were
issued to the regiments of comitatcnscs and federates, as in the earlier
period, by dc!cgatoriac, or warrants from the praetorian prefect
entitling them to draw specified quantities of foodstuffs from the
revenues of a given province. The next stage in the procedure, as
revealed by Egyptian documents, was that the actuary of the unit
applied to the ojJicium of the provincial governor, who issued an
order (or orders) to certain villages (similar orders were also issued
to large landowners) to supply specified quantities of foodstuffs,
against a receipt (jormaria) given by the actuary, which would en tide
them to deduct the amounts supplied from their assessed tax.1so
In certain cases the regulations provided for commutation of
rations and fodder. Actuaries were forbidden to draw in kind for
soldiers who were on leave, or were seconded for guard duties
to private persons, lest the foodstuffs should deteriorate during
their absence. Soldiers were entitled to opt for commutation, and
an actuary who had bought a soldier's rations might collect them
in money, but only with the consent of the taxpayer. Commutation
was in these cases made according to a schedule of prices laid down
by the prefecture in each annual indiction.
151
The Egyptian documents reveal that by the middle of the sixth
century the levy of foodstuffs in kind had become a formality.
A typical order from the provincial governor to a village specifies
the amounts to be delivered to the actuary in the form:
203 artabae of wheat
8750 units of wine or meat
and specifies in detail:
wheat in gold at 40 modii to I solidus-203 artabae
wine or meat -8750 units
of which in gold at 200 units to I solidus-5 ,ooo units
r-
I
RECRUITMENT AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE
Thus the bulk of the levy was officially commuted at fixed prices.
But the corresponding receipt (formaria) issued by the actuary for
the wine and meat runs: .
wine or meat 8,750 units
of which in gold 5 ,coo units
total 8,750 units making jo solidi.
In other words the actuary took the whole levy in gold. For the
5 ,coo units officially commuted he received 25 solidi (at 2oo units
to the solidus); for the remaining 3,750 units he extracted com-
mutation at a higher rate (25 solidi for 3,750 units works out at I 50
units to the solidus ),152
This did not necessarily mean that the troops received cash
allowances instead of rations and fodder; when on active service
or in transit they were certainly fed by their actuaries. When sup-
plies ran short in Rome in 53 7 Belisarius announced to the troops
'that he could no longer furnish them with rations in the usual way
during the siege, but they must draw half daily in actual provisions,
and the rest in money'. For troops in transit Justinian enacted
elaborate regulations. Special officials known as de!egatores were
to accompany the troops, and arrangements were to be made in
advance by the governors of the provinces concerned to collect
foodstuffs in the cities and estates along the route. The optiones
of the units were to draw rations in kind, and to issue receipts (here
called recauta) to the taxpayers who furnished the food. These
recauta entitled the taxpayer to deduct the amount from his next
tax payment; if the amount exceeded his assessment, he would be
paid in cash from the revenues of the province, or if these did not
suffice, from the general fund of the prefecture, or the credit would
be carried over to the next indiction. Two accounts from Oxy-
rhynchus set out in great detail the rations and fodder issued to a
detachment of troops (partly bucel!arii of the dux) who stopped for
a few days in the town in transit from the Thebaid.
153
When a large expeditionary force was assembled, a deputy
praetorian prefect was appointed ad hoc, as in the fifth century,
to organise its supply. Several such officers are recorded on the
Eastern front, and here, owing to the continuous wars, the post
eventually became during Justinian's reign a permanent one. A
special praetorian prefect also accompanied the expedition to Africa.
The initial supply of the African expedition was entrusted to the
praetorian prefect of the East, John the Cappadocian. Procopius
tells how the biscuit (bucellum) which he provided went bad on the
voyage, because, to save fuel and bakers' wages-and also to
economise on wheat, since the loaves lost a quarter of their weight
THE ARMY
by a proper double baking-he had given the bread only one
baking in one of the public baths of Constantinople.l54
The actuary became a caterer who with the money he drew in
lieu of produce bought foodstuffs and provided meals for his men.
He was entitled, even when he drew the food in kind, as when his
regiment was in transit, to a customary commission of one fifteenth,
and when he drew money and bought food, he doubtless was
allowed to make a profit. A curious set of rough calculations from
Egypt seems to have been made by an actuary. The writer sets out
that 63 jars of wine or 55 pints of oil cost I 8 carats, that a jar of wine
produces 6i issues (e<iyat) and a pint of oil 5 issues (presumably per
man per day) and that I 5! issues of either wine or oil are I carat. If
these figures are correct he was losing slightly on the oil ration but
gaining substantially on the wine.l55
Actuaries seem regularly to have supplied rations to their men
on credit-the food supplied seems often to have cost more than
the government allowance-and perhaps also to have made them
loans, recovering their money (with interest) when the soldiers
received their donative or other cash allowances. Anastasius issued
an elaborate regulation on this question. Officials were periodically
sent out from the offices of the magistri militum as erogatores. They
were to pay what Anastasius calls their solatia direct to the soldiers,
but if there was a dispute between a soldier and the actuary the
money was to be sequestered until the priores or senior N.C.O.s of
the unit had decided the issue. The actuary was forbidden to clalm
more than one tremissis per solidus as interest on any debt, however
many years old. If men were on leave whet1 the erogator arrived,
their solatia were likewise to be sequestered until their accounts
with the actuary had been cleared.l56
The regulations for leave were by the sixth century more elastic.
In Anastasius' day a tribune was authorised to give leave to up to
thirty men in his unit at any one time: the corrupt grant of leave
above this maximum was severely penalised. Justinian was also
insistent that tribunes must not make money by granting leave
(presumably beyond the legal maximum) and thus weaken their
units. All allusions to family allowances have been eliminated from
the Code, and it may be presumed that they had been suppressed.l57
Non-commissioned grades remalned unchanged from the fourth
century and were still remunerated by multipleannonae(andcapitus),
probal,ly on the same scale. The old distinction between the
comitatenses and limitanei in the titles of their N.C.O.s remained.
The former biarchi .and so forth up to senator
and finally przmzcmus, but m the leg10ns of Syene, Philae and
Elephantine the old grades which had existed under the Roman
RECRUITMENT AND CONDITIONS OF SERVICE
Republic still survived down to the Arab conquest. The priores
of the regiment of Elephantine, listed in the recruitment paper of
Patermuthis, included the primicerius and seven other ordinarii, one
of whom was the unit's adiutor, who kept its records. Among the
witnesses to the Patermuthis deeds figure Augusta!es and Flaviales
(grades believed by Vegetius to date back to Augustus and Ves-
pasian) and numerous centurions, as well as a drummer (
a surgeon two draconarii, a campidoctor, several actuaries or
former actuaries, and a number of vicarii or former vicarii. This last
grade, lieutenant commander of the unit, appears commonly in
the papyri and the laws. Its growing importance is perhaps due to
the fact that, as Justinian implicitly admits, tribunes were often
absentees.
158
The Codex J ustinianus, while preserving some laws on the fiscal
immunities of veterans, omits all reference to grants of land or
discharge bounties. The need for discharge bounties was less felt,
no doubt, because there was by the sixth century no age limit for
service. It appears from Anastasius' regulations for the troops in
Pentapolis that the priores of each unit, among both the comitatenses
and the limitanei, were guaranteed against discharge as infirm or
unfit for service; this privilege was limited to five per cent. of the
strength of each unit. Thus in the normal course of promotion a
man might reasonably hope to reach sufficient seniority to guarantee
him his pay for the rest of his life, or at any rate until he had saved
enough from his now ample pay to retire in comfort. As Procopius
explains the system, 'for those who are still young and have recently
joined the pay is less, but it increases for those who have undergone
some service and are now half way up the roll, while for those who
have reached old age and are about to be released from the army
the salary is much more lavish still, so that they themselves may for
the future have enough to live on in private life, and when they
are to end their lives may be able to leave to their family some
solace from their own property'.l59
Justinian, inspired it would seem by a desire for economy rather
than for efficiency, suppressed this abuse, sending round scribones
to inspect regiments and ruthlessly discharging the aged and infirm.
As he made no provision for their maintenance, Procopius is
justified in his protests against this measure. No provision was
made for men disabled owing to wounds until Maurice enacted
that they should be discharged and settled in cities, drawing a
pension from the treasury. Maurice also provided for the orphans
of men killed in action, ordering that their only or eldest son should
succeed forthwith to their father's rank and emoluments up to the
grade of biarchus.
160
THE ARMY
We know very little of how officers were appointed at this period.
Some few are known to have started their careers as buceffarii of
generals, but such promotion may not have been common; in most
of the known cases their employer had subsequently become
emperor, and was thus in a position to grant commissions to his
own men. The example of the emperor Justin shows that it was
still possible for a private soldier to rise to commissioned rank, but
we cannot say if such advancement was usual. The great majority
of officers seem to have been Roman citizens. Of the scores
mentioned by Procopius and Agathias only about a dozen-three
Huns, two Heruls, an Iberian, a Goth, a Gepid, an Anta and three
of unspecified race-are stated to have been barbarians. Agathias
comments on the fact that three men, though barbarian by race,
were tribunes of Roman regiments, and the fact that an officer's
nationality is noted when he was a barbarian again suggests that
such cases were exceptiona].l61
Officers continued to supplement their basic salaries by various
perquisites, some by now legalised, others still forbidden. The
stellatura (seven days' rations per man per year) was an established
institution as was the twelfth part of the annonae of fimitanei which
went to their tribunes, praepositi and duces. Payments for grant of
leave were illegal but evidently usual, and Justinian alludes to other
customary but illicit deductions which officers made from the pay of
their men. Officers also seem to have continued to appropriate the
rations and fodder of men who existed only on paper. Procopius
accused Justinian of having exploited this practice for the benefit of
the treasury. The emperor, he says, sent round auditors (l.oyoOhat)
to check the accounts of all units, stimulating their zeal by granting
them a commission of one-twelfth on all economies that they made.
These auditors did not allow the names of senior men who had
die? to be from the rolls. The treasury saved their pay,
which was high, but as a result numbers fell below establishment
and the avenue of promotion was blocked, so that the surviving
men continued to draw the lower pay of the junior ranks. Here, no
doll:bt, .as often ir: Sew;t History, Procopius is maliciously
attnbutmg to Justtman s destgn what were in fact normal abuses
of day. It is possible t?at Justinian in the interests of economy
deliberately kept some umts below establishment and left unfilled
the highest grades, which, .as a fourth-century had already
occasioned the heaviest expense. But it seems more
likely that officers often kept the names of dead seniors on the
books, an1 that Justinian's .auditors at this practice.l62
Officers salartes were still reckoned m annonae and capitus, but
these were always commuted. We have no detailed information
RECRUITMENT AND' CONDITIONS OF SERVICE
except about a general, the dux of Libya Inferior, which Justinian
confirmed at the existing figure. He drew 50 cash annonae and 50
cash capitus equivalent to 400 solidi (i.e. 4 solidi per annona or
capitus). This was presumably his basic salary, commuted according
to the law of 439 at the rates fixed in the particufaris delegatio of
Egypt. He also drew 90 annonae and 120 capita 'in kind', commuted
for the curious sum of r,oo5! solidi. These were probably his
perquisites commuted at a complicated market price which had
been fixed by custom. These figures betray how large a part of an
officer's pay was by now derived from originally illegal per-
quisites.l63
If it is true that Justinian suspended the quinquennial donative,
soldiers in his day were all somewhat worse off than heretofore. A
greater grievance was that their cash allowances were frequently
allowed to fall seriously into arrear. Procopius declares that the
annonae of the !imitanei on the Eastern frontier fell behind by four or
five years. The garrison ofBeroea, which deserted to the Persians in
5 40 complaining that their pay was long in arrear, were perhaps
fimitanei. Otherwise no irregularities are recorded in the main body
of the empire until Justinian's last years. In Africa and Italy local
revenues did not suffice to pay the large bodies of troops which
occupied them, and remittances of cash were sent irregularly from
Constantinople, with the result that the troops often remained
unpaid for years at a time. This had serious effects on discipline
and morale. In Africa the mutiny led by Stotzas in 53 5 was partly
due to lack of pay. In Italy long standing arrears had so dispirited
the troops by 5 42 that they refused to take the field, and shortly
afterwards the regiments transferred from Illyricum to Italy
marched back to their old home stations, excusing their action to the
emperor by the plea that they had long been unpaid. In 549 an Isaurian
regiment, embittered by lack of pay, actually betrayed one of the
gates of Rome to the Goths. Narses was only able to restore the
situation in 5 52 by bringing with him a large sum of money to pay
off long arrears.
164
Nor did Justinian's attempts to reduce military expenditure by
a rigorous audit of regimental accounts improve the temper of the
army. The activities of Alexander, the military auditor sent to
Italy in 5 42, are said to have caused great bitterness. At the end of
Justinian's reign Agathias regards the misdeeds of these auditors
and the arrears in pay, by now general and chronic, as being the
two main factors in the decay of the army. The auditors probably
did very necessary work in cutting out wasteful expenditure, but
they no doubt, as Procopius and Agathias alleged, also misused
their powers to blackmail the troops, threatening to discharge men
,I
THE ARMY
for relatively venial absenteeism or mere technical irregularities in
their papers.
165
After Justinian's death chronic financial difficulties made it
increasingly difficult to pay the army regularly and in fulL Maurice
was driven to attempt dangerous econmnies. A proposal to reduce
pay by 2 5 per cent. provoked a muriny in the Eastern armies in
which the newly appointed magister militum who announced the
change had to flee for his life. A later attempt to economise by
making the troops winter beyond the Danube and live off the
country was the major cause of the great mutiny which cost
Maurice his life.166
The recurrent and serious mutinies of the sixth century are
something quite new in the history of the empire, and must
indicate that the conditions of the troops had seriously deteriorated.
In Justinian's reign the trouble was mainly confined to the ex-
peditionary forces in Africa and Italy, where there were special
difficulties in financing the armies. In the main body of the empire,
where there was a well-established machinery for paying the troops,
there seems to have been no serious trouble until Maurice tried to
reduce military pay.
The position of the men in the expeditionary forces was, more-
over, rather different from that of the troops at home stations. The
former had nothing to live on except their pay and allowances.
Being on active service they had no opportunity of earning money
on the side, and many of them were very poor men, volunteers
from Illyricum, Thrace and eastern Asia Minor, who had probably
joined up because they were landless or their fathers' farms were too
small to maintain several adult sons. Men at home stations had
other means of maintaining themselves, and would not starve or
get into hopeless debt to their actuaries if they were not punctually
paid. It is significant that the Illyrian regiments transferred to Italy
did not desert or mutiny, but quietly returned to their home
stations. There no doubt they could count on more regular pay
through the established fiscal routine, but they probably also could
return to part-time jobs which they had had to abandon when they
were moved to Italy.
By no means all soldiers were poor men. Many of the limitanei
had lands which they cultivated. Patermuthis and his relatives in
law, though none of them owned any agricultural land, seem to
have been tolerably prosperous in a small way, with their boats and
house property. They could at any rate afford to indulge in
lltlgatton, and must have spent a constderable sum in notaries'
fees dra;ving up the l.ong to which they s<;>lemnly swore
and whtch they habitually vtolated. Among the comitatenses sons
'NUMBERS
of old soldiers who enlisted often inherited in due course a quite
comfortable fortune accumulated by their fathers during the
lucrative final years of their service. A document from Italy dated
639 reveals that Paulicis, a private in the regiment of the Ar-
menians, son of the late Stephanus, primicerius of the regiment of
Verona, owned a quarter share in a farm which must have been
fairly substantial: he 'gave' it to the church of Ravenna in con-
sideration of a cash payment of thirty-six solidi down, and the grant
to himself of an emphyteutic lease of the land at a perpetual rent
charge of one solidus a year. The army of occupation in Italy had
by now, as other documents show, settled down comfortably, and
many of the men had by investing their savings or by prudent
marriages acquired landed property. Both processes are illustrated
by a document dated 59 r whereby Tsitas, a private in the Perso-
Armenians, sold for twenty-four solidi a half share in a farm owned
by his wife to John, a retired N.C.O. (adorator) of the Felices Raven-
nates. In Africa the army began to dig itself in very early. Many
of the troops married the widows or daughters of the defeated
Vandals, and their indignation was great when the imperial govern-
ment ruled that the sortes Vandalorum were crown property.
167
One of the most important and most difficult questions, that of
numbers, has been left to the last. It has been argued in an earlier
chapter that Diocletian, if he did not as Lactantius avers more than
quadruple the army, increased it very substantially, perhaps to the
order of 50 per cent. or even roo per cent. John Lydus gives us
very precise figures for Diocletian's army, 389,704 with 45,562 in
the fleets, making a total of 43 5 ,266. These figures command some
respect by their very precision-John may have extracted them
from some old papers in the praetorian prefecture of the East,
where he served. Unfortunately we do not know to what period of
Diocletian's reign they refer, and the totals would have been very
different at his accession and his abdication. Zosimus gives figures
for Constantine's and Maxentius' armies in 312, 98,ooo and r88,ooo
respectively. If these are to be taken as their total strengths, and
not, as he implies, the actual armies which they put into the field
in the campaign of 312, the gross total of z86,ooo for the western
half of the empire would tally more or less with John's figure of
43 5 ,z66 for the whole empire. A rise of about 33;\ per cent. is not
impossible if it be allowed that John's figure does not represent
Diocletian's maximum strength, and that since his abdication his
successors had continued to increase their forces. The next gross
68o
THE ARMY
figure which we have is from Agathias, who, writing after Jus-
tinian's death, states that in the old days the army had numbered
645,ooo. It is not known from what source Agathias quoted this
number, but its relative precision suggests that it is not a mere
estimate, but based on official figures. Nor is it known to what
date it applies, but it presumably refers to the united empire, and
in that case cannot be later than 395, after which no figure for the
West could have been available in the East. It indicates an increase
in the order of I o per cent. to I 5 per cent. on the early fourth
century .1
68
.It t;night seem possible to this last figure from the Notitia
Dtgmtatum. In the Eastern sectiOn the army lists are homogeneous
and probably belong to the early years of the fifth century, very
shortly after the period to which Agathias' figure seems to refer:
there is one page missing, that which set out the forces under the
dux of Libya, but allowance can be made for this. The Western
lists .are more of a problem, for they have been revised piecemeal,
and mcompletely, down to the end of Honorius' reign. In certain
areas, provinces, Britain, Africa and Spain, the lists
of lzmztanet appear to have been preserved with little revision, if
any, from the late fourth century, and are therefore useful for our
purposes. In Gaul on the other hand the lists show the limitanei
drastically reduced by the losses incurred in the barbarian invasions
of the early fifth century and by the transfer of many of the sur-
viving units to the field army. The lists of the field army are also
late.l69
The main difficulty in using the Notitia is that we do not know
for certain the establishments of any of the types of unit which it
records. Under the Principate cohorts and alae (except for a few
double strength units styled milliariae of which only four cohorts
and four alae are listed in the Notitia) numbered 500. There is no
reason to believe that their establishment had ever been altered and
it be p:esumed to ha:re the same in the later empire.i7o
\With legions IS different and more complicated. The
legiOn of the Prmctpate numbered about 6,ooo men, and it is
probable that the new legions which Diocletian raised were on
the scale. The legions of the Notitia were however no longer
of this It had been the practice since the second century
to detach contmg_eJ?-tS (called vexillati?ns) from the legions to form
temporary the1r strength no doubt varied,
but some are styled mtllzarzae, and I ,ooo men may be conjectured to
have been the norm. From the reign of Diocletian such detach-
ments began to be severed from their parent legion. Some were
permanently posted in a different province, to which they had
NUMBERS 68I
been sent for a campaign: thus contingents from V Macedonica
and XIII Gemina, which probably formed part of Diocletian's
expeditionary force to Egypt in 295, are still found there in the
Notitia, where they are styled legions. Others remained in the
imperial comitatus, and finally became legiones palatinae or comita-
tenses.171
These legions were then probably about I ,ooo strong and it is
likely that this became the standard strength of the legions of the
field army which were subsequently raised. The few legions added
after Diocletian's time to the frontier were no doubt also on this
scale. There is, however, no reason to believe that the old (and
Diocletianic) legions on the frontiers were uniformly scaled down
to I,ooo men. Most of them were probably reduced by the loss of
two or three detachments; from the Notitia this can be proved
only in a minority of cases, but many legionary detachments in the
field armies may in the course of time have been destroyed, and
some are concealed under nicknames. Even so, however, one
would expect the rumps of the frontier legions to have remained
at two-thirds or half their original strength. Along the Danube
there is strong evidence that they did, for the Notitia shows the
legions subdivided into three, four, five or even six local detach-
ments, and unless these were abnormally small the legions before
division must all have been well over I ,ooo and in some cases at
least half of their original establishment. On the Eastern frontier
and elsewhere, where the legions were not broken up into smaller
groups, there is no clue to their size, but there is no reason to
believe that these legions were more reduced by the loss of detach-
ments than those of the Danube: in fact very few of the eastern
legions can be proved to have contributed any detachments to the
field armies.
172
For the new types of formation which do not go back to the
principate, the evidence is even more unsatisfactory. A schola of
the guards under Justinian numbered 500, and at the same period
John Lydus gives the same figure for a vexillatio. As this was also
the standard figure for an ala it may be postulated, in default of
other evidence, as the normal strength of all cavalry units, the
vexillations of the field army and those labelled equites or cunei
equitum in the frontier forces. There is no direct evidence for the
strength of the new infantry units, the auxilia, whether palatine or
among the limitanei. Nor is there any evidence for the various
miscellaneous formations-numeri, units of the fleet, and those
vaguely styled milites-in the frontier armies.l
7
3
Ammianus provides some useful information. During the siege
of Amida in 3 59 he tells us that about 2o,ooo persons were crammed
682
THE ARMY
into the little town, including, besides the citizens and civilian
refugees from the neighbouring area, seven legions (11 Parthica,
which was the permanent garrison, two raised by Magnentius and
transferred from Gaul, the Superventores and the Praeventores,
and the Thirtietll and tl!e Tenth) and some other troops. This does
not prove more than that the six legions of the field army cannot
have numbered much more than I,ooo each, if indeed they reached
that figure: Ammianus' number refers of course to the actual
strengtl! of the legions, which were probably much reduced from
establishment by the casualties of the long war. Constantius
demanded from Julian not only four auxilia palatina, but 300 men
picked from each of his other units (or at any rate from some of his
oilier units), and V alens in 377 formed an advance party to deal
with tl!e Goths in Thrace by picking 300 men from each regiment
of his army. This implies that regiments of the field army cannot
have numbered under 500 each. Gratian in 377 picked 500 men
from each of his legions, for a special operation, which implies that
legions of the comitatenses were-in actual fact and not only in
ideal establishment-well above that figure. Zosimus gives two
figures only. Five units withdrawn by Honorius from Illyricum
for the defence of Italy totalled 6,ooo men: these must be presumed
to have been legions of comitatenses. If Zosimus is right, these units
were some of them well over I,ooo strong. Later the Eastern
government sent six regiments, totalling 4,ooo men, to Honorius'
aid by sea. These units were certainly infantry-Honorius used
them to man the walls of Ravenna. They were perhaps all or most
of them auxilia palatina, in which case an auxilium would have
numbered 6oo or 700.174
This evidence is a very unsatisfactory basis for statistical cal-
culations, but it is possible to estimate with a very broad margin of
error the approximate size of the armies listed in the Notitia. In
the Eastern parts the field armies, if legions be reckoned at I ,ooo
men each and all other units at 500, come to a total of I04,ooo. This
is probably an under-estimate, for no unit is known to have been
under 500, some legions seem to have numbered over I,ooo, and
some of the pseudocomitatenses, which are all computed at the
minimum figure of 5 oo, were certainly legions. The limitanei of
the Eastern parts, if the twenty-seven old legions are reckoned at
3,ooo each, the few later legions and units styled milliariae at I,ooo,
and all the rest at 500, come to a total of 2p,ooo. To this figure
must be added the garrison of Libya, whose page is missing: on an
average of all tl!e other provinces they would number I6,ooo. The
total of Eastern limitanei would thus be about 2 5 o,ooo. Of these
64,ooo garrisoned the four Danubian provinces, about another
NUMB)":RS
64,ooo Egypt, the Thebaid and Libya, I I 5 ,ooo the seven provinces
on the Eastern frontier, while the comes of Isauria commanded
6,ooo. The grand total of the Eastern armies comes to 3 5 2,ooo,
without counting the scholae, which numbered 3,500.
In theW estern parts the field armies, as shown in the Notitia, total
4 5 legions and I 3 6 other units, or, or: the same basis of
which was used for the Eastern arm1es, II 3 ,ooo. The ftmttanet of
the four Danube provinces come to 8 I ,ooo, those of Britain to
28,ooo, those of Spain and Tingitania to 9, 5 oo. But !n Gaul and
Africa only 2 7 ,ooo are recorded. The total of limitanet thus comes
to I4 5, 5 oo. But even this modest figure must be. reduced, for
twenty units, mostly from Gaul, appear to be duphcates, havmg
already been counted among the comitatenses. The real total of the
limitanei thus comes to I 3 5, 5 oo, and the grand total of the Western
armies to less than 2 5 o,ooo (excluding the scholae at 2, 5 oo ).
The lists of the Notitia show the Western armies as tl!ey existed
about 42 5 after the heavy losses incurred in the great invasion of
the early Mth century. .The armies had been maintained
perhaps even 11_1 no;nmal strefl:gth, but ?nly by enrolhng
in tl!em nearly all the ftmttanet of the Afncan provmces and most of
those that survived in Gaul. In the late fourth centurythecomitatenses
may have stood at a rather lower figure, but the Rhine frontier
would probably have had a garrison comparable with that of tl!e
Upper Danube (8I,ooo) or the Lower Danube (64,ooo), while the
three African provinces would have had six or seven legions and
about twenty vexillations, perhaps as much as 3o,ooo men.
The actual total for tl!e whole empire which can be calculated for
the Notitia is about 6oo,ooo, rather less than Agathias' figure;
if allowance is made for the losses recently incurred in the West, it
would probably come to rather more. It can at least be claimed that,
when due allowance is made for the wide margin of error in the
calculations, tl!e data provided by the are roughly conson-
ant with Agathias' figure of 645,ooo and g1ve lt some support.
175
The number is of course a paper figure. It perhaps represents the
numbers of tl!e army if all units were up to establishment, perhaps
the numbers contained in tl!e annual returns of strength sent in to
the imperial secretariat by the magistri militum and duces, and used
by the praetorian as a basis calculating annonae and
capitus. Since no army IS ever up to establishment, the latter figure
would be somewhat lower. Whichever of the two it is, it is certainly
considerably higher than the effective force which tl!e government
had at its disposal. It would include dead men and deserters kept
on the books whose rations swelled the tribunes' emoluments. It
probably by this time included many entirely fictive men whose
M
THE ARMY
rations formed a customary perquisite of duces and tribunes. As an
index of the military strength of the empire it has relatively little
value. But as an index of the financial burden which the army
imposed on the empire, it is significant, for whether they really
were serving or were living as farmers or traders, and whether they
were alive or dead or totally imaginary, pay and allowances were
issued for 64 5 ,ooo men.
For Justinian's reign we have no paper figures, but an estimate
of the effective total. Agathias declares that by the end of J ustin-
ian's reign the army, including the forces in Italy, Africa and Spain,
had through neglect and false economy been allowed to fall to
barely I 5 o,ooo. This round figure is clearly an estimate, and is
equally clearly a pessimistic estimate, erring on the low side. But
Agathias was a contemporary military historian and his figure must
be taken seriously. It makes sense only if we assume that he had
written off the limitanei: and this, if, as Procopius says, Justinian
deprived them of the name of soldier, he may well have done. If
so, Justinian's army, though nearly 50 per cent. larger than the
field army of the East a century and a half before, was certainly
small for the area which it had to defend. The Notitia shows, as we
have seen, over Ioo,ooo men in the Eastern field army. In Mrica
before the Vandal conquest there were about 2 5 ,ooo comitatenses
under the comites of Mrica and Tingitania. In Pannonia under the
comes of lliyricum there were another I 5 ,ooo, and in Italy itself over
z8,ooo. Thus, without counting the small area of Spain recovered
from the Visigoths, Justinian's army of 15o,ooo was defending the
same area which I7o,ooo men had failed to hold.176
In view of the large number of troops which the empire maintain-
ed it is surprising how small were the forces which it could put into
the field for particular campaigns. The largest on record is the
expeditionary force which Julian collected for his Persian cam-
paign: it is the only army which was drawn from the united
resources of the whole empire. According to Zosimus, who is here
using a good source, it numbered 65,000 men; Zosimus speaks of
the I8,ooo men under Procopius as if they were to be added to the
total, but probably they are included in it. A few years before, in
3 56, Constantius sent Barbatio against the Alamans with 2 5 ,ooo
men, and at the same time Julian could muster only I3,ooo for the
battle of Argentoratum. In.405 Stilicho had 30 regiments, perhaps
zo,ooo men, at his disposal to fight Radagaesus.177
In the sixth century the largest force on record is that which
Anastasius assembled for the Persian war in 503: it was according
to Procopius the greatest concentration of troops which was ever
made on the Eastern front. A contemporary who lived on the spot
NUMB,BRS
puts the total at 5 z,ooo, and gives circumstantial evidence which
supports such a figure. In Justinian's reign Belisarius disposed of
an army of 25,ooo on the Eastern front in 530, and of zo,ooo in the
following year, while in 543 as many as 3o,ooo men were got to-
gether for the Persian war. In lliyricum there was an army of
I 5 ,ooo in 499 to face a Bulgar inroad, and again in 5 48 when the
Sclaveni and Antae invaded the country. Belisarius invaded Africa
with only I 5,ooo regular troops (and I,ooo allies and an unspecified
number of his own bucellarii). He attacked Sicily and Italy with an
even smaller force, 7,ooo regulars (with 500 allies and his bucellarii).
The Italian front was several times reinforced, but in 5 42 there
were only u,ooo men in the country, and in 5 54 I8,ooo.
178
These small figures need not, however, throw doubt on the gross
totals. With all large armies it is difficult to put into the field for a
given campaign more than a very small proportion of their total
numbers; the great majority of the troops are tied down by various
local commitments. This was markedly the case with the later
Roman empire. The limitanei in the first place were tied down to
local defence and internal security duties: they were useful and
indeed indispensable in the eyes of the imperial government, which
took some trouble to maintain their numbers and efficiency, but
they were not available for a major campaign. They accounted, as
we have seen, for about two-thirds of the total at the end of the
fourth century.
The comitatenses were originally conceived as a mobile field army
at the immediate disposal of the emperor and available for any front.
But within a generation they had been subdivided into the palatine
or praesental armies, which remained at the emperor's free disposal,
and regional armies of ordinary comitatenses, allocated to the Eastern
frontier, Thrace, Illyricum, Gaul, Africa, and even, it would seem,
Britain at times. These regional armies were not absolutely static,
it is true. Units could be, and were on emergency, transferred
from them to reinforce the palatine troops. But it was never felt
safe to denude any of the main fronts of comitatenses altogether, and
it would appear that by Julian's day the Gallic army was composed
mainly oflocally enlisted men, Gauls and West Germans, who had
spent all their lives in Gaul, and strongly resented being posted to
the East.
The fact was that the limitanei, weakened by the withdrawal of
their best elements to the comitatenses, could not be relied upon to
hold a massive attack long enough to enable reinforcements to
arrive from a distance, and tactical reserves (the regional comita-
tenses) were required in addition to the strategic reserve (the
palatini). In the Eastern parts, about 6o per cent. of the comita-
686
THE ARMY
tenses were at the end of the fourth century allocated to the tactical
reserves and in the \\'est in the early years of the fifth century
little m; re than 2 5 per cent. of the field army remained at the dis-
posal of the magistri . .
As time went on the reg10nal arnues of comttatenses became
more and more static and were more and more dispersed, serving
as permanent reinforcements to the provincial armies of !imitanei
on the actual frontier and in cities behind it. Many of them became
in effect garrison troops whose main function it was to maintain
internal security and assist the civil government in tax collection.
By the end of the fifth century even the praesental armies had been
partly absorbed in such duties. The troops under the command of
the duces by now inclu1ed, as we have seen, not only and
comitatenses of the reg10nal army, but some praesental units and
federates. Many praesental units must also have been allocated to
internal security duties in Asia Minor under the various military
governors established there since the middle of the fifth century.
It was this recurring and constant tendency to disperse troops on
local garrison and internal security duties which was perhaps the
chief weakness of the later Roman army. Such troops always tended
to degenerate. They rarely. saw real active service and their training
was neglected, so that they DisciJ::line
became slack, and many soldiers drifted mto ctviltan avocations
while remaining technically on strength. As more and more tr?ops
were frittered away and became virtually useless for field operations,
more troops had to be raised to strengthen the field armies, and the
army steadily grew in size and expense. But the number of
fighting troops available to meet a large-scale attack on the emptre
or to reconquer lost provinces did not rise and was rarely adequate
for these tasks. The army was a heavy drain on the limited man-
power of the empire, and an even heavier incubus on its meagre
economic resources, but a very small proportion of the men and
money was effectively used for defence.
. i
CHAPTER XVIII
ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE
R
OME was already in Diocletian's day an anachronism. It
had ceased to be the capital of the empire in any but a formal
sense, and it never became so again. As an administrative
centre Rome was under the later empire of no greater importance
than a dozen other cities which were capitals of dioceses. It had
never possessed any industry which served a wider public than its
own citizens, and the establishment of an imperial clothing factory
cannot have greatly enhanced its economic importance. It had never
been a centre of commerce. Its survival as a large and prosperous
city was due to the maintenance of its antique political prerogatives
and to the growth of its new spiritual supremacy.
1
One anachronistic privilege which obviously helped to maintain
the city's population was the system of food doles. Partly by force
of inertia, partly from a lingering sentimental regard for the Roman
people, the imperial government maintained the free issues of food
which had begun as political bribery in the days of the Republic
and had been continued and enlarged by the earlier emperors.
The number of recipients had fallen since the palmy days of the
Principate, but in the middle of the fifth century, when the Western
empire was on the verge of collapse, still stood at 12o,ooo persons.
Another survival was the senate. It had for centuries ceased to
play any effective role in the goyernrr:ent of the empire, bu.t it
remained a very wealthy body which enjoyed great soctal presttge.
Rome was still the seat of the senate, and many senators, including
the richest members of the order, maintained their town houses and
resided there for a part at any rate of the year. Their vast servile
households and hordes of clients not only made an appreciable
addition to the population of Rome, but provided a market for
local shopkeepers and craftsmen and for merchants who imported
luxury goods from all quarters of the empire and from beyond
frontiers. The games which the senators gave attracted to the ctty
a large floating population of charioteers, grooms, actors, singers
and the like. As the main focus of senatorial society Rome was also
687
688
an important educational centre: its schools attracted from all the
Western provinces and even from the Greek East ambitious young
men who wished to drink from the fountain-head of Roman elo-
quence and Roman law-and to mix in high society.
The Roman church, richly endowed by the imperial munificence
of Constantine and growing steadily wealthier generation by
generation, supported many thousands of clergy, widows, virgins
and paupers. Its shrines attracted hordes of pilgrims, and the
growing authority of the popes drew to Rome an increasing stream
of bishops and clergy, eager to expound their grievances or canvass
their claims.
Constantinople on the other hand was founded as an imperial
residence, and grew to greatness as an administrative capital.
Successive emperors, it is true, bestowed upon the New Rome many
of the privileges which old Rome enjoyed. Constantine himself
initiated a free issue of corn to 8o,ooo persons. Constantius II
bestowed on it a senate and instituted praetorian and consular
games on the Roman model. Theodosius II gave imperial patron-
age to its university. Its church acquired vast wealth through the
benefactions of the emperors and of senators, and its bishops ex-
ploited the secular prestige of the New Rome to build up and
extend their spiritual authority. But all these were only incidental
advantages derived from its primary role of imperial capital.
Constantinople owed its phenomenal growth first and foremost to
the fact that it was the seat of the emperor and his court. It housed the
palatine ministries with their thousands of officials. It was the seat
of the praetorian prefecture of the East which administered the
five richest dioceses of the empire. It was the military headquarters
of the two praesental armies of the East. The supreme courts of the
emperor and the praetorian prefect and a multitude of lesser
tribunals maintained a host of lawyers and attracted floods of
litigants from every province. Crowds of suitors flowed in from all
parts of the empire seeking redress for their grievances, exemptions,
privileges and appointments.
These were undoubtedly the main factors in the greatness of
Constantinople. The city seems to have possessed no major
industries. In view of its favoured geographical situation it might
have been expected to have become a centre of commerce, but we
hear little of Constantinopolitan merchants: the city certainly never
rivalled Alexandria in commercial importance. What eminence it
achieved in other spheres it owed directly to the presence of the
court and the government. Despite these advantages its schools in
the sixth century still had strong and probably superior rivals in
those of Athens, Alexandria and Berytus, and its church had wealthy
ADMINISTRATION
and powerful competitors in the other patriarchal ~ s of the East.
The difference between the two capitals is reflected in the
housing statistics given in the two Notitiae. At Rome there were
in the early fourth century under I,8oo domus, or separate houses
occupied by one family, and about 45,ooo insulae, or tenements in
blocks of flats. In Constantinople the number of insulae is not
recorded, but there were by the early fifth century 4,388 domus,
about two and a half times as many as at Rome. In the Eastern
capital there was, it would appear, a much larger middle class,
consisting mainly of officials and lawyers and professional men,
who lived in separate houses. In Rome there seems to have been a
sharper break between a small number of wealthy householders and
the mass of the population which lived in tenements. 2
For a number of reasons we know much more about Rome than
about Constantinople. There survives an ancient Notitia of either
city enumerating the principal public buildings and monuments
region by region, and also giving some statistical information on
the number of houses, baths, bakeries, and similar institutions, and
on the administration of the regions. The Notitia of Rome can be
dated to about the end of the reign of Constantine, that of Con-
stantinople is dedicated to Theodosius II. Apart from this our
information on Constantinople is defective. The pages in the
Notitia Dignitatum dealing with its prefect and his staff have fallen
out. There are virtually no inscriptions from Constantinople, and
it so happens that the Codes contain far fewer laws dealing with
its affairs than with those of the old capital. For Rome we possess
besides these sources the official despatches (relationes) of Sym-
machus as prefect of the city in 3 84-5, a group of despatches to
and from his nephew Symmachus, prefect of the city in 418-9,
relating to the disputed election of Pope Boniface and the ac-
companying riots, and the Variae of Cassiodorus, which include
besides incidental notices the formulae of appointment of the
various Roman magistrates.
For reasons which lay in its past history Rome was governed on
quite different lines from the other cities of the empire. The ser-
vices which were normally provided by the local council were in
the capital administered directly by the imperial government. The
administration of Constantinople seems to have been deliberately
copied from that of Rome, and, so far as we can reconstruct it,
followed its model very closely.
In supreme charge of the city was the praefectus urbi. This
ancient office, which went back to the days of Augustus, was still
esteemed highly honourable, ranking immediately below that of
praetorian prefect, and was normally filled by members of the best
families of the senatorial aristocracy. The pressure of candidates
for the office was heavy, and it was usually held for a brief term
only: the average tenure. was only a little over a year. With the
position of the prefect of the city as president of the senate, judge of
senators and judge of appeal over a group of provinces, we are not
here concerned. In the city he was not only the supreme judicial
authority and responsible for the maintenance of order, as he had
been under the Principate. He was also responsible for all the
civic services, whose heads were no longer as in earlier times
co-ordinate with him and directly responsible to the emperor, but
'under his disposition'.
3
This did not mean that they were appointed by him. They
received their codicils of office from the emperor, who was rarely
at Rome and seems often not to have consulted the wishes of the
prefect. Praetextatus was informed in 368, evidently in response to
a protest, that he should report any of the subordinate magistrates
guilty of maladministration, and that the emperor would then, if he
found the charge to be true, make another appointment either by
the advice of the prefect or by his own choice. Symmachus had the
temerity to complain of the poor quality of the subordinates sent to
him from Milan and to advise the young emperor Valentinian II
to take more care over appointments. He received a sharp rap over
the knuckles, and subsequently took malicious pleasure in reporting
back to the emperor appointments which contravened the law.
A new tribunus fori suarii had arrived demanding to be installed in
office forthwith; what of the present holder who had not completed
his legal term? A new archiatrus had produced an imperial rescript
whereby he was appointed to the second post in the college: was
this consistent with the law of V alentinian I which ordered that new
members of the college should start at the bottom of the ladder, and
moreover should only be admitted with the approval of the
college?
4
These examples are sufficient to show that the prefect was by
no means master in his own house. Confusion was increased by
the failure of the imperial government to demarcate clearly the
functions of the urban prefect as against those of the lesser offices.
Two constitutions dated 365 and 376, which regulate the spheres of
the prefect of the city and the prefect of the annona and their
respective ojjicia, are masterpieces of ambiguity, while the relations
of the praefectus urbi and the vicarius urbis,. the vicar of the praetorian
prefects whose seat was at Rome, were a constant cause of friction. 5
ADMINIS'fRATION
The Notitia Dignitatum gives a list of the minor offices under the
disposition of the prefect of the city. Some of these were of great
antiquity, going back to the senatorial curatores and the equestrian
praefecti and procuratores established by Augustus and his immediate
successors. In the former class were the curator, or as he was now
more usually known, consularis aquarum, the curator (or consularis or
comes) riparum et alvei Tiberis et cloacarum, and the curator (or con-
safaris or praefectus) operum publicorum or operum maximorum,
responsible for the aqueducts, the banks and bed of the Tibet and
the drains, and the public buildings respectively: the Notitia gives
two curatores for the public and greatest buildings; but an inscrip-
tion implies that the two terms were synonymous. Two new
curatores have appeared, the curator statuarum, who looked after the
numerous statues in the streets and squares, and the curator hor-
reorum Galbianorum, under whose charge were the storehouses of
oil and wine.s
In the second class the most important were the praefectus annonae,
responsible for the corn and bread supply, and the praefectus
vigilum, the chief of police. The comes formarum, whose duties seem
to duplicate those of the consularis aquarum, was perhaps descended
from the procurator aquarum of the Principate, who undertook the
technical maintenance of the aqueducts. The co!J!eS portus (or
portuum) is clearly derived from the procurator portus utriusque who
managed the harbours of Ostia and Portus. The centenarius portus
was presumably his assistant.
7
Other magistrates were by origin officers of the urban cohorts,
detailed for special duties. A clear case is the tribunus fori suarii,
who in a Constantinian inscription is still styled 'tribunus cohor-
tium urbanarum X XI et XII et fori suari': he controlled the meat
market. The tribunus rerum nitentium, who was responsible, pre-
sumably under the curator statuarum, for the protection of bronze
and marble statues, held in the middle of the fourth century the
humble rank of centurion. Another magistrate, not mentioned by
the Notitia, the tribunus voluptatum, who controlled theatrical shows
and actors, actresses and prostitutes, was also no doubt in origin
an officer of the urban cohorts.
8
Besides these there were the rationalis vinorum, who presumably
managed the area vinaria, the fund derived from the sale of wine by
the state, and the magister census, perhaps derived from the a
censibus of the Principate, who was primarily registrar of the senate,
maintaining the list of members and the assessments of their
property, but also acted as a general registrar for the city.
9
These officers had their own ojjicia, and many of them their own
courts in which they administered justice in matters arising out of
their functions. From the reign of Constantine the distinction
between the senatorial and equestrian offices was broken down, and
senators began to hold the more important of the latter, particularly
the annonae. We know little of the holders of the minor
offices; a retired army doctor from one of the guards regiments
(ex medico scutariorum) was promoted by Magnentius to be centurio
rerum nitentium.
10
Constantinople first received a praifectus urbi on I I December
3 59 Among the minor offices we hear only of the magister census,
the praifectus annonae and the praifectus vigilum. The last was known
locally in Greek as the 'night prefect' (vvurinaexo,), a title over
which Justinian waxes facetious, asking if he got up when the sun
set and went to bed when it rose. The office had by his day fallen
into low esteem, its holder not being appointed by imperial codicil
but nominated by the prefect of the city, often from his ojjicium. In
53 5 Justinian reconstituted the office under the more dignified
title of praetor p!ebis (nealrwe rwv Ofwwv). The new praetor was
appointed by codicil, and was assigned (with his assessor) a salary
of IO lb. gold, and a proper ojjicium, including a commentariensis, 20
soldiers and 30 matricarii; he was to be selected from among the
comites consistoriani, tribuni praetoriani et notarii, or other ex-magis-
trates of high character. Four years later, in 5 39, Justinian created a
second police officer, the quaesitor, for Constantinople. Procopius
represents this officer as an inquisitor into unnatural vice and other
sexual offences. The Novel creating the office gives it entirely
different functions. The primary duty of the quaesitor was to control
all persons who came to the capital, to find out the purpose of their
visit, to expedite their business, which was usually legal, and to
ensure that they returned to their own provinces and cities without
delay: in particular he was to see that peasants coming up to
petition their landlords or bring an action against them returned to
their farms with the minimum waste of time. Able-bodied im-
migrants who had no ostensible business and no visible means of
support were to be deported to their own provinces and if slaves
restored to their masters. Able-bodied residents with no visible
means of support were to be put to work on the public buildings or in
the bakeries, or in the guild of gardeners or one of the other guilds, on
pain of expulsion. The aged and infirm, whether resident or immi-
grant, were permitted to beg. The quaesitor received a salary of
ro lb. gold, his assessor IOO solidi, and his ojjicium I 30 solidi.l1
In one respect the capitals under the later empire fell below the
POLICE AND FIRE
standards achieved by Rome under the Principate .. It had been one
of Augustus' notable reforms to establish a city gendar-
merie, the three urban cohorts, and a regular fire-bngade, the seven
cohorts of vigiles, who also acted as Both these
forces had by the early fourth century been disbanded or melted
away. The three urban cohorts are last in _an
dating from the last twenty years of Constantme s re1gn, which, as
mentioned above records a 'tribunus cohortium urbanarum X XI
et XII et fori sua;i'; and it may be suspected one tribune not only
commanded all three cohorts but also superv1sed the meat market,
they then existed only on paper. Symmachus, it is _true, s.reaks of
his retiring cornicularius as 'urbanarum olim cohortmm miles', but
it is clear that the phrase means no more than a member of the
prefect's ojjicium, which had always been drawn from the urba_n
cohorts. Tribuni urbaniciani are mentioned in a law of 396, but the1r
office was probably a sinecure.
12
It is abundantly clear that the prefects of the city had no armed
force at their disposal. Ar_nmianus graphically
courageous Leontius, prefect m 3 5 5, who quelled an mc1p1ent not
over the arrest of a popular charioteer by ordering his
officials to seize the leaders of the mob and torturmg and condemn-
ing them to exile on the spot. Later, when rioting broke _out again
over the price of wine, despite the protests the. and
officials in his train he rode into the crowd m h1s chanot, and
arrested its one Peter Valuomeres, with his own hands.
Tertullus in 3 59, when bread riots became serio:'s, w_as to
offering his children as hostages to the crowd. V1Vent1us m 367 was
quite unable to control the riots by the disputed papal
election between Damasus and Ursmus, m which I37 persons were
killed in one engagement, and retired ingloriously to a suburban
villa. Symmachus had twice to complain to the emperor that
senators had openly flouted his officials and even assaulted them
when engaged in the execution of their no other
remedy. His nephew was almost as helpless m w1th the two
rival candidates for the papacy, Boniface he
sent his primiscrinius, in with an 1mpenal r_nJSSJVe, to
arrest Boniface, not only did Bomface refuse to subm1t, but
crowd beat up the primiscrinius. Later Boniface was placed m
detention, but only when the urban officials reinforced by
soldiers sent for the purpose. When Eulalius, agamst whom the
decision finally went, entered the city contrary to the emperor's
orders, Symmachus, having in vain ordered his expulsion ?Y the
ojjicium urbanum, eventuallY: hauled hir_n out of sanctuary w1th the
aid of a number of corporatt and the prtores regtonum ,13
:1
In Constantinople the position of the prefect was not so weak,
as the emperor normally resided in or near the city and the scbolae
were there on call: the final arrest of John Chrysostom was effected
by Lucius, the pagan tribune of the Scutarii, with 400 men-newly
enlisted Thracians who were not yet infected with partisan feelings
-at his back. But the history of Constantinople is nevertheless
punctuated with destructive riots arising out of religious disputes,
food shortages and the rivalries of the circus factions.14
In both cities the prefects had normally to rely on an amateur
night watch to maintain order. The Notitia of Constantinople
enumerates for each of the thirteen regular regions of dty in-
cluding Sycae across the Golden Horn, one curator 'who has charge
of the whole region', one vernaculus or public slave who acted as his
messenger, and five vicomagistri 'to whom is entrusted the care of
guarding the city by night': the fourteenth suburban region had
not even these. The Roman Notitia records two curatores and
forty-eight vicomagistri for each of the fourteen regions of the city.
The curatores, at Rome at any rate, seem to have been senators
Severus Alexander, to the Augustan History, instituted
fourteen _curatores urbts Ro'!'ae o_f consular rank, evidently one for
each regwn, and under Dwcletian and Constantine a few senators
record .among their offices that of curator or consularis (sacrae urbis)
of a grven region. The vicomagistri were presumably descended
fron: elected hea?men of or quarters whom Augustus
had mstituted and grven that title: rf so they had ceased to be linked
with the vici, which varied in number region by region, and were
always fewer than forty-eight, the standard number of the
vicomagistri. The primates, priores or maiores regionum, whom the
younger Symmachus frequently admonished to keep the peace
during the disJ?uted papal election, and with whose aid he finally
arrested Eulalius, were perhaps identical with the vicomagistri
perhaps their leaders. It is clear, at any rate, that they were amateu;
constables, not regular police.1s
The praefectus vigilum likewise had no vigiles under his command
in th.elater .empire. An inscription dated 3 62 shows that the cohorts
of vtgiles still held festal parades and that the men were still graded
as pump. operators and the like. But this probably only means that
the officials of the praefectus vigilum, who had in the old days been
seconded from the cohorts, continued to be entered on their nom-
inal rolls under the traditional titles. The title of tribunus vigilum
like th.at of tribunus urbanicianus, still survived in the fifth century
for a smecure or rank. But for extinguishing fires the capitals
now ?epended, hke any provincial city, on the amateur services of
collegtatt, members of the guilds. The Constantinopolitan Notitia
FOOD SUPPLY
records region by region the number of collegiati 'who are ap-
pointed from the various guilds and help in case of fires'; the total
is 5 6o, and the number in each region varies from seventeen to
ninety. John Lydus tells us that in his day, when a fire broke out in
Constantinople, the cry was raised (in Latin) 'omnes collegiati'.
The use of the Latin formula implies that the system was introduced
from Rome and must have already existed there when Constantin-
ople was founded. Symmachus mentions fire fighting among the
services rendered by the guilds to the city of Rome, and a con-
stitution of 369 directed to the prefect of the city speaks of a corpus
centonariorum, one of the guilds from which the fire service was
usually drawn. The praefectus vigilum had apparently lost his fire-
fighting duties both in Rome and in Constantinople by Justinian's
time, and become a magistrate who dealt with petty crime, espe-
cially theft, and was responsible for the night watch.
16
The supply of food and drink was elaborately organised. It may
be considered under the heads of water, bread, oil, meat and wine.
Rome had been amply provided with aqueducts under the Princi-
pate, and here the task was only one of conservation. It was the
duty of the consularis aquarum and comes Jormarum to make the
necessary repairs and to prevent trees being allowed to grow
within ten feet of the aqueducts. The cleaning of the aqueducts was
a burden which fell upon the owners of the land through which they
passed; they were compensated by immunity from other extra-
ordinary charges. At Constantinople it was with difficulty that the
erection of aqueducts kept pace with the requirements of a growing
population. There was, according to Themistius, a serious short-
age until Valens completed the aqueduct which still dominates the
city. Another was started by Theodosius I and was financed by
suspending the games offered by the praetors and making them
instead subscribe fixed sums to the aqueduct fund. Under Arcadius
some praetors were ordered to give games again, but it is likely that
others continued to subscribe to the aqueduct. fund, which thus
became permanent. Marcian enacted that the consuls, instead of
scattering money to the crowd at their inauguration, should pay
roo lb. gold for the repair of the aqueducts, and Zeno instituted
an honorary consulship which carried the same obligation. There
were also certain taxes levied at the landing-stages of Constantin-
ople which were devoted to the repair of the aqueducts. At Rome
also there was an aqueduct fund; its sources of revenue are un-
known. At Constantinople there was a regular technical staff of
aquarii (voeoqn!J.aue;) who inspected the aqueducts, carried out
routine maintenance, and detected illicit tapping by private persons:
they were branded on the hand for identification, and their service
ranked as a militia. At Rome the aqueducts were still in the sixth
century as under Augustus maintained by groups of state slavesP
Some aqueducts were assigned exclusively to public buildings:
the Aqua Hadriana at Constantinople was reserved for the im-
perial palace, the public baths (thermae) and the large ornamental
public fountains (nymphaea). Most fed cisterns or tanks (lacus) from
which the public could draw. The Notitia of Rome enumerates
these region by region; there were altogether I,3 52. Private supply
could be obtained only by imperial grant, and the diameter of the
pipes was strictly regulated. A constitution addressed to tb,e
prefect of Constantinople in 382 established three scales, two
inches or at most three for the greatest houses which had superior
baths, one-and-a-half inches for medium-sized houses, if they had
baths, half an inch for small houses.
1
B
At both capitals a daily free issue of bread was made to certain
categories of the population. At Rome there had been a monthly
dole of corn to citizens since 58 B. c. It was limited by Augustus to
a fixed number of recipients, the plebs Jrumentaria, who held tickets
(tesserae): these tickets had by the early third century become
hereditary and saleable. The corn dole was later, perhaps by
Aurelian, converted into bread, which was served daily from a
number of 'steps' (gradus) and was hence known as panes gradiles.
The number of recipients, which under Augustus had been rather
over 2oo,ooo, appears to have been reduced under the later empire to
I 2o,ooo. The daily ration in the first half of the fourth century was
50 ounces of coarse bread, and by this time some payment-
probably an originally illicit tip hallowed by custom-was de-
manded. In 369 Valentinian reduced the ration to 36 ounces (six
half-pound loaves), but enacted that it should henceforth be good
quality bread and issued free of charge. He also ordered that at
each of the 'steps' the names of the recipients should be engraved
on a bronze tablet. with the amounts to which they were entitled.
He forbade the sale of rations to unqualified persons, such as
officials or slaves, especially those of senators, but tickets no doubt
and saleable to those qualified to hold them,
c1t1zens who received no other form of annona.19
On 8 May 3 32 Constantine inaugurated a similar dole of bread
at Constantinople. Here too the bread was issued from 'steps',
which according to the Notitia numbered I I7: it was not, however,
known as panes gradiles but as annonae populares. The original
number of recipients was So,ooo. In 392 Theodosius I increased the
FOOD SUPPLY
daily allocation of corn by 125 modii, which wduld have provided
bread for about I ,ooo additional recipients: no other increases are
recorded. In 372 Valens forbade the sale of annonae populares.
Henceforth if a recipient left the city his ration was to lapse to the
state and such lapsed rations (annonae caducae) were to be allocated to
other qualified applicants; it would also seem that when a recipient
died his ration lapsed. These rules do not seem to have remained
in force for long. By the end of the fourth century annonae could
be inherited or sold legally, and by the latter part of the fifth
century many had passed into the possession of churches.
2
0
Constantine and Constantius II encouraged the growth of their
new capital by granting a bread ration to anyone who built a house
in the city. These rations (panes aedium) went with the house,
passing to the new owner if it was sold: they were still being
granted at the end of the fourth century to builders of new houses.
At Rome also there were panes aediftciorum; they are mentioned only
once, in 3 69, and it is not known when they were instituted. At
Constantinople annonae were sometimes allocated to state em-
ployees: thus in 3 72 Valens ordered that the seven copyists of the
public library should be remunerated with annonae populares which
had lapsed.
2
1
All these types of ration seem to have been known as annonae
civicae. As time went by the title on which they were held was often
forgotten and disputes arose. One such dispute has left its record
in the Code in series of contradictory constitutions ranging from
38o to 393 It was alleged that Constantine had allocated annonae
civicae to two of the scholae, the Scutarii and the Scutarii Clibanarii,
and that these rations had been improperly bequeathed to their
descendants or sold to outsiders by the beneficiaries. The govern-
ment at first accepted this version, and in 3 So ordered that when a
scholaris died his ration should revert to his schola, which would
allocate it to another member: in 3 89 it further ordered that annonae
which had already passed to the heirs of the recipients or been sold
should be reclaimed for the scbolae. In 392 it was persuaded that
Constantine had granted the annonae to individual members of the
scholae, and accordingly confirmed the tenure of their heirs and
assigns. Next year it changed its mind again and decided that these
annonae had originally been granted to scholares who built houses in
the city: it therefore ruled that those held by persons who did not
own houses should be reclaimed, and would be allocated to soldiers
who built houses in the future. Eventually the tenure of the exist-
ing holders was confirmed.22
The government did not only provide corn for the free issue of
bread to these limited classes. Its objective-which it sometimes
698 ROME AND CONSTANTINOPLE
owing to bad harvests, losses or delays in transport, or administra-
tive muddle or corruption failed to achieve-was to import to Rome
and Constantinople sufficient corn to ensure that the whole
population would be adequately fed and that bread shortages and
consequent riots should not occur. The corn for Rome came
normally from Africa, where it was levied in kind as part of the
land tax: it was the responsibility of the praetorian prefect of Italy,
through the praefectus annonae Africae, to collect it and ship it to
Portus. The corn for Constantinople was similarly levied as tax in
Egypt; the praetorian prefect of the East was responsiblefor its
collection and transport to the capital. The annual shipment
(lfJ:fJoJ.Ij) from Egypt to Constantinople amounted in Justinian's
re1gn to 8,ooo,ooo artabae or 27,ooo,ooo modii. This was enough
to feed about 6oo,ooo persons; the free issue to about 8 5 ,ooo
persons would have consumed under 4,ooo,ooo modii. The amount
of ru;nual import (canon frumentarius) to Rome is not recorded in any
offic1al document, but may perhaps be inferred from the Historia
Augusta. In this work Septimius Severus is alleged to have left
enough corn in at Rome to feed the city for seven years at the
rate of 75 ,ooo modu a day, that 1s about 27,ooo,ooo modii a year.
The author of the life may have obtained this figure from a Severan
source, but it is more likely that he supplied it from his own know-
ledge. In that case the canon of Rome in the early fourth century
would have been approximately the same as that of Constantinople
in sixth. The free issue at Rome was larger, but it would have
requ1red only about five and a half million modii. 23
At Constantinople the state canon was supplemented by a civic
f';lnd. for the purchase of corn, initiated by Monaxius, prefect of the
Clty m 409. He got together 500 lb. gold, partly by subscriptions
from the senate, and this sum was each year used to buy corn or
lent for that purpose to the guild of bakers, and recovered as the
corn was sold. Any profits which accrued were added to the
capital, and the fund by 434 had risen to 6n lb. gold, which would
have bought annually well over a million modii. The fund was
administered by the prefect of the city, and despite the efforts of
John the Cappadocian to bring it under the control of the praetorian
prefecture remained in his hands under Justinian. 24
Upon its arrival at Portus the canon frumentarius became the
responsibility of the praefectus annonae of Rome. The corn was
unloaded by the saccarii, measured by the mensores and stored in the
local pending its shipme.nt up the Tiber in the barges of
the caudtcartt. These two last guilds had many opportunities for
q':arrel :. in 3 89 they publicly recorded gratitude to Ragonius
Vmcentms Celsus, praefectus annonae, for his good offices in settling
FOOD SUPPLY

a long-standing dispute to the satisfaction of ooth parties. They
also had at;J-ple. opportunities f'?r cheating the bakers' guild at
Rome by p1lfermg corn or sendmg them mouldy grain instead of
good. In 417 the government ordered that, in order to check the
frauds of the caudicarii and the thefts of the mens ores of Portus the
guild of bakers should henceforth elect one of its patrons to keep
watch over the granaries of Portus: he was authorised to send
sealed samples of grain to his colleagues at Rome. Arrived at Rome
the corn was stored in the Roman granaries, whence it was.carted
as it was required to the bakeries by the catabolenses. In this guild
were enrolled by a law of 368 freedmen whose assets in cash
chattels, land or buildings exceeded 30 lb. silver. The high propertY
qualification demanded-I 5o solidi-implies that the catabo!enses
were unpaid or at any rate inadequately remunerated. 25
Finally the bakers (pistores) ground the corn and baked the bread.
were to. the Notitia 274 which produced
pants gradi!zs for distnbution; the number of pnvate bakeries which
made bread for sale is not recorded. Our information mainly
concerns the P';lblic bakeries and the guild of bakers (corpus
pzstorum), sometimes called contractors (mancipes), who operated
them for the state. The bakeries were large establishments,
equipped with beasts to turn the mills and .with slaves for the other
work. The maintenance of the stock of slaves was evidently a
problem. A number of fourth-century laws direct the governors of
suburbicarian provinces to . condemn persons convicted of
mmor offences to hard labour m the Roman bakeries, but the
supply of convicts was evidently inadequate, for according to
Socrates the bakers in the reign of Theodosius I had established
bars and brothels on the street fronts of their establishments and
kidnapped their unwary customers. For turning the mills animals
were gradually replaced by water power, derived from the aque-
ducts. Water mills are first mentioned in a law of 398. By the
sixth century they had become universal. When the Goths,
besieging Rome in 5 36, cut the aqueducts, one of the effects was to
bring all the mills to a standstill, and the bread supply would have
ceased but for Belisarius' ingenious scheme for utilising the
current of the Tiber. 26
Even under the Principate the baking business at Rome, which
was under strict government control, was apparently not very
attractive: Trajan had to encourage freedmen and others to enter
it by the grant of legal privileges to those who operated a fair-sized
establishment, capable of handling not less than a hundred modii a
day. When the state took over the baking of the bread for the dole,
the bakers who contracted for this work may have undertaken it
N
700
voluntarily, but by the beginning of the fourth century they were
legally bound to their trade. Membership of the guild was obliga-
tory on all persons who held property which had belonged to a
baker. It was therefore normalfy hereditary, but anyone who
acquired a baker's property by legacy, gift or purchase was enrolled,
and so were those who married bakers' daughters (and received
dowries with them), even if they subsequently divorced them: this
rule applied even to actors and charioteers. Bakers were forbidden
in 3 64 to sell their property to senators or officials, who could not
very well take up the trade, and in 3 69 were prohibited from
alienating any inherited property at all; anything which they
acquired from an outside source they might alienate during their
lifetime, but only to another member of the guild.
2
7
Bakers were forbidden to obtain release by joining the privileged
decuriae urbis Romae or to take orders in the church. They could
not be exempted by the unanimous vote of the guild, nor even by
imperial rescript. Despite all these precautions the membership of
the guild tended to sink, and it was necessary to enrol outsiders at
regular intervals. By a curious rule laid down by Constantine and
reiterated in 370 and 3 So the governors of the African provinces
were obliged every five years to send qualified persons to Rome to
be enrolled in the guild. It was perhaps as a consequence of this
rule that by the middle of the fifth century there were a substantial
number of bakers' estates (praedia pistoria) in the African pro-
vinces.28
It may be presumed that the bakers received the corn that they
handled gratis, and enjoyed the use of their premises and equipment
free of charge; they also, as we have seen, were furnished with
convict labour. But there is no indication in the laws that they
received any remuneration from the government. The guild
possessed a number of estates (fundi dota!es), which were attached to
the several bakeries and whose rents were used to subsidise their
operation: the origin of these fundi do tales is unknown, but they
were perhaps the estates of former bakers which had been wrong-
fully alienated and assigned to the guild corporately. It is plain,
however, from the whole tenor of the laws that the bakers were
expected to finance their business from the rest of their private
property. Indeed when Valentinian in 369 made the inherited
property of a baker inalienable, he expressly assimilated it to the
fundi do tales of the bakers.
2
9
The,poorer members of the guild sometimes found the burden
too much for them; we hear of bakers going bankrupt and being
struck off the roll. But not all bakers were poor men. Some even
aspired to become senators, and by a law of 364 were allowed to
T
I
\
'
FOOD SUPPLY 701
do so provided that they surrendered to substitutes from their
families the property on which they had operated their bakeries. ao
The public bakeries can hardly have been confined to baking
panes gradi!es, for they would in that case have handled only
between fifty and sixty modii a day each, and they were clearly much
larger establishments. They perhaps also produced the panes
fisca!es or Ostienses which were sold at a low price fixed by the
government; the figure laid down in 398 was one ttummus. A law
of 364 suggests that they were furnished, perhaps with this purpose,
with a certain amount of corn at a low price. The profits from the
sale of state corn perhaps went into the area frumentaria mentioned
in 386.
31
We know very little of the arrangements for the production of
bread at Constantinople. There were state granaries, controlled
by an official known as the comes horreorum. The public bakeries,
according to the Notitia, numbered only twenty or twenty-one:
they must have been very large establishments, each capable of
supplying about 4,ooo people and handling about 500 modii a day.
The private bakeries, of which there were about r zo, must have
been on a similar scale to supply the rest of the population. It looks
as if Constantine planned the baking industry of his new capital,
building large public bakeries and perhaps encouraging the
establishment of large private bakeries by privileges and subsidies.
The guild of bakers (corpus mattcipum) provoked no such spate of
legislation as did the Roman guild-in fact only one law of Leo
which prohibited mattcipes from holding the office of comes hor-
reorum-and it may perhaps be inferred that their conditions of
service were more equitable than at Rome.
32
On the supply of oil our information is very defective. There _was
a canon of oil imported by the state to Rome from the Afncan
provinces, and there was a free issue of oil, apparently made to the
same persons that received the panis gradilis; the system is said to
have been initiated by Septimius Severus. The oil was probably
distributed at Rome through the shops known as mensae oleariae,
of which there were 2,300 in the city. A law of p8, addressed to
the prefect of the annona, directs that mensae oleariae which fell in to
the state owing to the death of the proprietor without heirs should
be sold at the fixed price of twenty folies: the purchaser could
transmit the mensa to his heirs but was forbidden to sell it. From
this it would appear that mensae oleariae were a source of profit, and
cannot have been merely stations for the distribution of the free
issue: they perhaps had a monopoly of the sale of oil. The area
olearia mentioned in 386 may have received the profits from the
sale of state oiJ.33
Symmachus mentions three guilds concerned with the meat
supplies of Rome, the mutton, beef and pork butchers, but the
Code does not allude to the first, and speaks of the second, the
pecuarii only when it was in 4I 9 joined to the third, the suarii. This
is the government was mainly interested in the issue of
pork initiated by Aurelian. The structure of the guild of pork
butchers was very like that of the bakers, and its history mus_t have
been similar. Septimius Severus granted to those who on
business in the pig market, provided that they put of
their capital into supplying the city, the same legal prlV!leges that
Trajan had given to the bakers. Aurelian must have made use of
this privileged guild to conduct the free issue of pork. By the
fourth century membership of the guild, on which lay the burden of
the pork distribution, was obligatory on anyone who held or ac-
quired property belonging to a pork butcher, and was therefore
normally hereditary. Pork butchers were forbidden to hold honores
or enlist in the ojjicia, or to take orders in the church, unless they
surrendered their property to the guild.
34
The free issue of pork was made for only five months, or I 5o days,
in the year. The ration (opsonif!m) was five a and
the recipient from 4I9 took his monthly m one deln:e.ry;
previously it had been issued more frequently m smaller quantltles.
The pork butchers thus had to produce 4,ooo opsonia, or 2o,ooo lb.
of pork, daily, so that in the course of the month all I2o,ooo
citizens on the free list were served. The meat was provided by a
levy of pigs from designated cities in Campania, Samnium and
Lucania with Bruttium.as
The levy of pigs encountered serious administrative difficulties
and gave rise to a series of regulations of which the Code has
preserved five, issued by Constantine (324), Julian (363), Valen-
tinian I (367), Honorius (4I9) and Valentinian Ill (452), while an
inscription records an edict of Turcius Apronianus, prefect of the
city in 363. These regulations, which are lengthy ru:d detail_ed,
reveal the complexity of the system, though they leave Jts workmg
obscure. One difficulty was that pigs vary in weight, and the
suarii were prone to judge them by eye rather than take the trouble
of weighing them. Constantine explained that commutation was
introduced to check this abuse: if the landowner questioned the
pork butcher's estimate of .the weight of his pigs, he was entitled
to pay in money for the number of pounds for which he was liable.
The price was to be that prevailing in the local market, which the
provincial governor was to notify annually through the prefect
of the city to the suarii. In this way, the emperor explains, the
suarii will not suffer. whatever the price may be, as they will be able
FOOD SUPPLY

to buy pigs in the local market. f?r the same the
owners have paid them. Valentmian I was stncter, ms1stmg that if
pigs were paid in kind, they must be weighed, having been starved
for one night.
36

A more important difficulty was that 1n bemg dnven to Rome
the pigs lost weight considerably, some I 5 per cent. 20 per cent.,
and the suarii, having levied the correct amount m the south,
found they had too little when they arrived in Rot;Ie, and
make up the deficit by local purchases. The pnce of p1gs in
southern Italy, where they were abundant and the population
small was moreover lower than that at Rome, where the demand
was far higher the suJ.?ply sma!ler. If the suarii
received commutation for pigs at pr1ees preva!lmg in the south,
the money would not buy as much pork at Rome, and once again
the suarii would be faced with a deficit.
Turcius Apronianus endeavoured to sol':'e this difficulty by
granting a subsidy of 2 5 ,ooo amphorae of drawr: from the
wine levy (titulus canonicus vinarius), of which two-thirds (more
exactly I7 ooo amphorae) was allotted to the suarii and one-third
(8,ooo amphorae) to the councils of the cities in the pig
levy (ordines qui suariam recognoscunt). The detruled a!rangements for
the distribution of this subsidy are obscure, but it would appear
from Valentinian I's law that, when pigs were commuted, the
councils were expected to use it to make ?P the difference
the local price, which the landowners prud, and the pnce,
which the suarii were now entitled to receive. If actual pigs were
delivered, I 5 per cent. was apparently to be added to the weight to
allow for loss in transit. 3
7
In 452 this complicated was at last rationalised.:mder
a scheme devised by the great Aetms. Henceforth the suarzz were
to be allocated fixed sums from the revenues of the three provinces
concerned, 6,400 solidi from Lucania, 5,400 from I,95?.
from Campania; they also received 950 from the gui\d of boartt
or pecuarii, which had been joined to them in 4I9. With this su:n of
I4,700 solidi they undertook to buy pork at 240 lb. the sohdus,
and, as the price was generous to them, to throw m IOo,ooo .lb.
as a bonus. This made a total of 2,628,ooo lb. of pork, which
allowing 20 per cent. for wastage would provide (the arithmetic is
not quite corect) 4,ooo opsonia of 5 lb. fo! I 5.o days.
38
. . .
These laws well illustrate the comphcations of adnumstratwn
and accounting caused by in k!nd and their p_art!al com-
mutation at fluctuating and variable pnces. They also mcidentally
illustrate the prevalence of official wh!ch. these com-
plicated transactions favoured. Juhan m his law ms1sts that the
money paid in commutation must be collected by the provincial
governors through the city councils, and not by the officials of the
urban prefecture or by the suarii 'because the officials
of the greater ministries as a rule bring ruin upon the provincials'.
Turcius Apronianus prohibited the outrageous fees extorted by the
tribunus fori boarii, the patroni of the guilds concerned, and the
various ofjicia involved in the collection, which according to the law
of 419 included not only that of the urban prefect but that of the
vicar of the city.
39
Wine was not supplied free. Aurelian, according to the authors
of the Historia Augusta, thought of starting a free ration, but was
deterred by his praetorian prefect, who protested: 'If we give the
Roman people wine too, it only remains to give them fowls and
geese.' The author, however, argues that Aurelian must have
planned a free wine issue from the fact that in his own day 'fiscal
wines' were offered for sale to the people in the colonnades of the
Temple of the Sun. Wine was then in the fourth century provided
at low prices: V alentinian I ordered that they should be 2 j per cent.
below market rates. It was obtained by a levy in kind on the
suburbicarian provinces, the titulus canonicus vinarius, which
Valentinian I and Gratian insisted must be paid in kind and not
commuted.
40
The state evidently exacted more wine than it could dispose of,
for it made payments in wine; 2 5 ,ooo amphorae were, as we have
seen, granted annually to the suarii and the ordines qui suariam
jaciunt, and, as will appear later, the limeburners were in the fourth
century paid in amphorae of wine. The public sale of wine was
presumably by the rationafis and its went
into the area vznarta. Most of the takings of the area vznarta must
have been in copper small change, which was of no use to the
government, and one of Symmachus' official reports indicates that
denarii so received were issued to the guild of coffectarii, the money
changers, who had to reimburse the treasury in solidi at a rate fixed
by the government, buying solidi on the open market at current
rates. The funds of the area vinaria were not reserved for the city
of Rome: allocations might be made from them to such purposes
as public works, but any surplus went to the sacrae largitiones. This
appears from two indignant letters of Symmachus on behalf of his
father-in-law Vitrasius Orfitus who had been prefect of the city
twenty-five years before. It appears that Constantius had ordered an
enquiry into the arrears of the area vinaria, and that Gratian, advised
by Basilius, his comes sacrarum fargitionum, had reopened the enquiry.
Symmachus protested vehemently against this raking up of old
scandals, alleging that of the deficit rr ,4oo solidi had been paid to
AMENITIES

the treasury, and the rest was covered by guarantees from various
provincial governors, including those of Campania and Tuscia, who
apparently admitted responsibility for failing to collect arrears from
their provinces. 41
So much for the necessities, food and water: next come the two
essential luxuries of city life, the baths and the games. Rome was
furnished with eleven vast and palatial public baths (thermae) built
by imperial benefactors ranging from Agrippa to Diocletian and
Constantine. Constantinople had by the mid-fifth century eight
(or nine if one in the suburban region be included), one built by
Constantine, four by emperors of the Theodosian house, and three
by private persons, including the famous baths of Zeuxippus. In
both cities there w,ere also a multitude of private baths scattered
over the regions, r 53 in Constantinople, and over 8 30 in Rome.
The thermae were financed by entrusting their management to the
same guild of contractors, the mancipes salinarum, who farmed the
salt pans, a profitable monopoly. There was also a guild of sixty
shippers (navicufarii) on whom was laid the burden of transporting
the wood required for heating the public baths: the wood was a
levy exacted from designated cities including Tarracina. The
mancipes safinarum complained to Symmachus that they had been so
reduced by exemptions corruptly obtained from the emperor that
they could not face the burden, and asked that new members be
enrolled from other guilds or alternatively that the navicularii should
share their responsibilities; the latter objected to this suggestion,
but were willing to surrender a few of their members.42
The games at Rome and Constantinople were provided partly
by senators, who were under a legal obligation thus to celebrate
their tenure of the offices of quaestor, praetor and consul, and
partly by the emperors. The latter maintained various permanent
establishments for this purpose. At Rome there were four gladia
torial training schools (fttdi): they are last mentioned in a law of 397
and were presumably suppressed shortly after, when gladiatorial
shows were abolished. At Constantinople they may never have
existed; for Constantine banned gladiators as early as 3 26 and in the
new capital where he resided the law was no doubt observed. There
is no record of permanent menageries of wild beasts at either capital,
and as they were expensive to feed and deteriorated in captivity they
were probably obtained as occasion demanded. Beasts were
regularly supplied to the emperor from the frontier areas by their
duces, and their transport to the capitals involved heavy expense to
the cities en route. In 417 the officials of the praeses of Euphratensis
made a vigorous protest against those of the dux, because a convoy
of beasts had stopped three or fqur months at Hierapolis, and
elicited a ruling that no convoy might stay longer than a week in any
town. The emperors took care to prevent the stock of wild beasts
from being exhausted; there was a ban on the hunting of lions by
private persons,43
At Rome the Notitia records the four stables of the factions,
where apparently not only were horses kept immediately prior to
the races, but a standing stock maintained; its numbers were kept
up by the horses furnished for the various games by the emperors
and by the consuls and praetors. The emperors had a number of
studs in the provinces. The products of those of Palmatius and
Hermogenes (the former in Cappadocia) were specially prized, and
when past racing continued to receive fodder from the imperial
granaries. Horses from the Spanish studs might on the other hand
be sold by the factions. The city of Capua, in recompense for
supplying 2,ooo modii of beans per annum to each of the four
stables at Rome, was entitled to receive horses for its own games
from them. For Constantinople we have no details, but the
existence there of actuarii equorum currulium proves that race-horses
were maintained in the city. Not much is known of provision made
for theatrical games. As has been already mentioned, at Rome the
tribunus voluptatum controlled actors and actresses. At Constan-
tinople the presence of actuarii tqymelae implies that there was a
permanent imperial troupe which received pay or rations.44
The games given by senators were more numerous and more
splendid at Rome, where they were an old tradition and the
ancient senatorial families took pride in spending' fabulous sums
upon them: the government had to curb their lavish expenditure,
which forced up the standard and made things difficult for humbler
members of the order. At Rome the main burden was, it seems,
carried by the aristocracy and the emperors did little: even under the
Ostrogothic kingdom Roman senators continued to give lavish
games. At Constantinople the new aristocracy was not so rich and
lacked a tradition of ostentatious munificence. The government
had to lay down how much praetors had to spend on their games
(quaestorian games are not recorded). When Marcian reduced the
number of praetors to two and freed them from the obligation to
give games, only the consular celebrations survived and these
dwindled and finally died with the consulate. The m p e ~ i l govern-
ment must have taken an ever-increasing part in providing games
for Constantinople and finally taken over the whole burden.
Roman senators, if Symmachus is typical, did not merely foot

AMENITIES
the bill for their games, but took immense pains to obtain the best
horses, wild beasts, gladiators and actors that money could buy. It
is possible that humbler members of the order, and in particular
absentees who entrusted their celebrations to the censuales, drew
upon old horses in the stables of the factions: their games were
despised by Symmachus as 'mediocre'. At Constantinople the
consuls by the sixth century did not even foot the entire bill,
receiving a substantial subsidy from the government.
45
Both Rome and Constantinople were centres of higher education.
V espasian had established salaried professorships of rhetoric and
grammar at Rome, and by the fourth century philosophy and law
had been added to the curriculum. The professors were appointed
by the senate, but were paid by the praetorian prefect; Symmachus
protested to Hesperius, then praetorian prefectofltaly, at his having
withheld his annonae from the philosopher Priscian, to whom a
salary had been duly voted by the senate. Students were controlled
by the magister census. According to the law of 370 they had to
present to him letters of introduction from the governors of their
provinces, stating their city, birth and character: they had to notify
him under what professor they proposed to study and where they
were lodging. The censuales were to supervise their conduct and
see that they did not waste too much time at the games; unsatis-
factory boys might be beaten and sent back home. None might
stay beyond their twentieth year. The prefect of the city was with
the aid of the censuales to make a monthly return of arrivals and
departures to provincial governors, and also to the emperor, so
that he could select promising students for his service. Professors
of grammar, rhetoric and law were still appointed by the senate
under the Ostrogothic kingdom, and still received annonae, but
now through the prefect of the city: Cassiodorus had to reprimand
the senate for allowing salaries to fall into arrears, and ordered that
they be paid half-yearly. They were confirmed by Justinian after
the reconquest by the Pragmatic Sanction.46
At Constantinople the emperor in the fourth century appointed
salaried professors on the recommendation of the senate; Libanius
as a young man occupied the chair of rhetoric. In 42 5 the university
of Constantinople, if it may be so called, was put on a more regular
basis. Unauthorised persons were forbidden under pain of de-
portation to teach in public, and private tutors were allowed to
instruct only their own pupils in their homes. Higher education
became the monopoly of the professors of the Capitol. There were
to be three who taught Latin rhetoric and ten Latin grammar;
for Greek there were to be five teachers of rhetoric and ten of
grammar: there were also to be one philosopher and two lawyers.
All were appointed by the senateandaftertwenty years' satisfactory
service were rewarded with the title of comes primi ordinis and
equality in precedence with ex-viC)lrs.
4
7
At Rome there was a rudimentary public health service, initiated
by Valentinian I. He ordered that a salaried doctor should be
appointed in each of the fourteen regions except two. They might
accept retaining fees from privateJatients, but might not charge
for their services, and were directe to give most of their attention
to the poor. When a vacancy occurred the new doctor was to be
elected by his colleagues, subject to imperial confirmation. There
were still public doctors at Rome in the sixth century, when
Justinian after the reconquest confirmed their salaries.
4
8
Rome was too amply equipped with a plethora of public build-
ings, useful and ornamental, the great walls of Aurelian, the
aqueducts, the bridges, the granaries, the baths, the circus, amphi-
theatre and theatres, not to speak of basilicas, temples, triumphal
arches, columns and statues. There were, as we have seen, several
magistrates charged with their maintenance, the curator operum
pubficorum or maximorum, the curator statuarum, the tribunus rerum
nitentium, as well as the consu!aris aquarum and comes Jormarum. The
city architect was an important functionary, whose letters of ap-
pointment Cassiodorus included in his Jormufae.
49
The labour was provided by certain guilds which Symmachus
fails to specify. The chief materials required, since most of the
work was repairs and there was ample stone available from derelict
buildings, were bricks and lime and sand for mortar. We know
little of the brick supply. Cassiodorus speaks of an annual produc-
tion of 2 5 ,ooo bricks for the repair of one of the harbours, and of
revenues earmarked for the purpose. Lime was furnished by the
guilds of the limeburners (calcis coctores) and carters (vectuarii or
vectores) from designated estates in the provinces of Tuscia and
Campania. A law of 3 6 5 lays down that the annual requisition shall
not exceed 3 ,ooo loads, half of which was allocated to the aqueducts
and half to general repairs. This apparently all came from Cam-
pania, as the annual delivery of 900 loads from Tuscia was by the
same law suspended except for emergency demands. The total did
not include the contribution of Tarracina, which was earmarked
for the' harbour and lighthouse of Portus. The lime-burners and
carters were remunerated by the owners of the estates from which
the lime was obtained, at first in amphorae of wine, later (365) in
gold, at the rate of one solidus per load. This was apparently an
. .
PUBLIC WORK AND _FIN.ANCE
advance on the old rate, and the state contributed a quarter of it
from the area vinaria. In compensation the owners of the designated
estates, which were known as caespes ca!carius and vectuarius,
enjoyed immunity from taxation. There were apparently other
estates which furnished sand (caespes arenensis) and enjoyed a
similar immunity. This system continued to function under the
Ostrogothic kingdom, when it was directed by an officer called the
praepositus calcis. so
Constantinople by contrast with Rome was an expanding city
where new construction was going on throughout the fourth,
fifth and sixth centuries. The successors of Constantine down to
Justinian continued to embellish the city with new aqueducts,
baths and palaces, paying for them from imperial revenues. Money
was also obtained by suppressing or suspending the games and
making the consuls and praetors subscribe instead to a building
fund. Nothing is known of the provision of labour and materials,
except that lime was burned locally until in 419 the
prohibited the practice as detrimental to public health.
1
The finances of the two cities present a picture of inextricable
confusion. The last praejectus aerarii Saturni recorded is Julius
Eubulides, who was subsequently vicar of Africa in 344 Sym-
machus, however, still speaks in 3 84 of the treasury of the Roman
people (aerarium populi Romani), which received revenues from
certain provinces, including Spain and Egypt. Besides this central
treasury there were, as we have seen, many departmental treasuries,
the area frumentaria, o!earia, vinaria and the aqueduct fund. Sym-
machus also alludes once to the area quaestoria; its function is un-
known, but perhaps it handled the finances of the quaestorian
games. There was probably also a separate treasury for public
works; there were at all events special taxes earmarked for them. 5
2
The finances of the city were yet further complicated by the
system of compulsory services and levies in kind, and by the
subsidies and cross-payments which were introduced from time to
time to prevent the system from breaking down. The subvention
of wine given to the pork butchers and the combination of the
contracts for the baths and the salt pans have already been men-
tioned. One of Symmachus' reports reveals yet another complicated
series of compensatory grants. It appears that Tarracina, in view of
its obligation to supply wood for the Roman thermae and lime for
the harbour of Portus, had been granted subsidies from other
designated cities. Furthermore Puteoli had received from Con-
stantine a grant of r 5 o,ooo modii of corn a year from the canon of
Rome, which grant, halved by Constans, had been brought up to
roo,ooo modii by Constantius. A number of other Campanian
cities, including Capua, also received corn grants, no doubt to
;hem. in their task of delivering lime and pigs to Rome. In
Juhan rergn, Lupus, t?e consu)ar of Campania, finding that
Tarracma no longer. i.ts subsidies and complained that it
could not keep UJ? Its ob!tgatrons to Rome, took 5, 700 modii of
corn from Puteoh and allocated it to Tarracina: this measure,
though by .Mamertinus, the praetorian prefect of Italy,
recerved 1mpenal as Ju.lian was away on the
Persian war. Under Gratlan Capua complamed that Cerealis the
the city in 3 5 2-3, had cut the corn grants to the Cam-
paman from Roman canon by 3 8,ooo modii, and Gratian
their re.storatlon to the figure. On the strength of this
Puteoh refused to pay rts 5, 7oo modii to Tarracina. It is
httle wonder that Symmachus referred this tangled problem to
the wisdom of the emperor. 53
The finances of Constantinople were doubtless as involved but
we know little of them. There was as we have seen a trust fund
for buying grain, the area frumentarid, and an aqueduct' fund with its
own treasurer (arcarius); whether there was any central treasury we
do not know. 5
4
Constant!nople grew rapidiy in the first century of its existence.
!3Y th.e of fifth century it had so greatly overspilled
rts orrgmal hnuts that m ;P 3 the imperial government built a new
landward wall about a mile further west than Constantine's thus
nearly doubling the.area the city. Rome on the contrary,' as its
wealth and shrank within the great circuit
of walls which Aurelian had grven to it. Its decay was at first
Even the sack of the city by the Visigoths in 410, though
rt meant a vast loss of portable valuables, does not seem to have
had any lasting effect, and it may be doubted whether the more
thorough sack by the Vandals in 455 was disastrous. What was
serious .was gradu:J loss by the great senatorial families of
their m. Afnca, Spam and Gaul, and the cutting off of the
corn and oil tnbute by the Vandal occupation of Africa. Senators
must had much smaller incomes to spend in Rome when they
drew therr rents only from Italy and Sicily, and the corn and oil
supply. must become very precarious.
Cassrodorus m one passage in a nostalgic tone of the
past greatness of Rome, and Its population had evidently shrunk.
'The ample extent of the walls', he writes, 'the wide area of the
of enter:ainment! the an:azing size of the baths, and the
multitude of mills, specially designed for the food supply testify
to the hosts citizens' which had once thronged Rome.
less the Vartae show that under the Ostrogothic kingdom the city
'AMENITIES

711
was by no means derelict, and that its administration still func-
tioned. The free distribution of foodstuffs to the plebs frumentaria
continued; the aqueducts supplied abundant water for the baths;
the games still provoked riots; the buildings were regularly
maintained. 55
From the reconquest by Justinian Rome seems to have sunk
rapidly. The prolonged and destructive sieges during the Ostro-
gothic war not only did great material damage, notably to the
aqueducts, but the population must have been much reduced by
famine, disease and emigration. Justinian promised to maintain the
annona and the revenues allocated to the repair of the public build-
ings, the embankment of the Tiber, the harbour of Portus and the
aqueducts, but it may be doubted whether he was able to fulfil his
undertakings. Finally the Lombard invasion completed the ruin of
the ?ty. In the whole of Pope Gregory's register there is one
allusiOn to the prefect, and of the multitude of minor magistrates
and officials who still under the Ostrogothic kingdom adminis-
tered the public services he mentions only the comes jormarum. The
imperial government still made some contribution to the feeding
of Rome by requisitioning corn from Sicily, but the city was
largely dependent for its very food on the charity of the Roman
church. 56
CHAPTER XIX
THE CITIES
T
HE Roman empire was an agglomeration of cities (civitates,
n6J.s;), self-governing responsible. for
administration of the areas which they occupied, their
territories. In each civitas there was a town which was its
trative capital and in varying degrees its economic and socral
centre, but there was no legal distinction. bet_ween the urban
rural members of the community. Const1tut1r;nally and
tratively, then, the cities were the cells of the empue. was
composed. Geographically the map of the was a of
city territories. In terms of persons all Roman clt!zens-:-wh!ch smce
21
2 A.D. meant practically all. indigenous inhabitants of the
empire-belonged to ctvztas. Membership_ depended not on
residence or place of buth but on (orzgo): a man was a
citizen of Ephesus not because he hved there or had _been born
there but because his father-or, if he was freedman, his patron-
was ;n Ephesian citizen. If he resided in some ?ther he
would as a domiciled alien (incola) become subject to vanous
obligations to the city where he lived, but he remained a member of
the city of his origin, which retained a claim on his services.
1
The above statements require some qualification. The.
capitals of the empire lay outside the framework of the mumcrpal
system. There were also u;lits ?f which were
not cities either commumtles of infenor const1tut10nal status, or
areas, it would seem imperial lands, which were
administered by the imperial government. the
evidence at our disposal it is clear that these were.an msigm-
ficant minority. The Notitia Galliarum, an official register of the
administrative units of two dioceses of Gaul and the Seven Pro-
vinces, drawn up, it would seem, in the late fourth ?r early fifth
century, shows II4 civitates as against 8 other umts. the
Eastern half of the empire we possess the Synecdemus of H1erocles,
a document which is based on an official register, probably drawn
up in the middle of the fifth century, and has been imperfectly
712
NUMBER AND SJZE 713
rev:ised down to the reign of Justinian, and for the two dioceses of
Onens and Egypt we have a compiled by
George. of Cyprus, probably m Justinian's t1me. Hierocles' lists
are mamfestly defective, but by correcting them from other evidence
ol!e can reconstruct the administrative map of the Eastern empire
tolerable exactitude. There were in all rather over 1 ,ooo
umts of government, and of these less than roo were not cities
We know very little about these extraterritorial units save their
names, titles and location. In the diocese of Oriens there were
altog;ether about twenty-fiv,e villag_es or &roups of villages,
varyiJ?-g from to nJ_Ue (evauo.;pta) m number. Most
were 1n the provmce of Arabia, or m the adjacent parts of Palestine
II and Ill. In areas, which had once been parts of
the Ituraean prmcipahty and the Nabataean kingdom, city life had
not yet developed when they were annexed to the empire and the
v!Jlage had remained the unit of governmen;, These
as we kno:v. from t?eir abundant inscriptions, were self-
governmg communltles, which managed their own revenues and
possessed and erected public buildings: the governing body was a
mass meeting (O'xJ.ol"), _which elected annual and passed
decrees. In fact the villages seem to have differed from small cities
o_nly in a. council (fJovJ.fJ), and several were promoted to
city rank m the third and fourth centuries. In the mountainous and
a_reas of Phrygia and Pamphylia there were ten 'peoples'
wh1ch were probably rural communes of a similar kind.
The castra of Gaul were apparently communes which had been
detached from the greater civitates but not granted the status of a
civitas themselves.s
of units are styled estates (un}para, xwela, uJ.fjeo<)
or regzones (esyewvsc;), tractus (uJJpara) or saltus (adJ.rot) terms used
in thi.rd cen:ury for districts managed by the of
the pa.tnmony or re! privata. It seems likely that they were
of.Impenalland, admm1stered by the res privata: a group of
regz_ones m central _Cappadocia may be identified with the domus
dtvtna per Cappadoctam. The origins of these extraterritorial blocks
of imperial land are for the ffi:OSt unknown, but some at any
rate had been of chent _kmgdoms. The four regiones of
A;uathus, Gadara, L!vias and Jericho can be certainly identified
four toparchies of the Herodian kingdom, and it is perhaps
s115nific_ant other groups of regiones occur in the interior of
Bithyma and m Cappadocia, and a group of tractus in the area of the
I turaean principality. 4
. cities of the naturally varied very greatly in size and
m soc1al and economiC structure. In some the urban centre was a
THE CITIES
populous town. There were industrial towns like Tarsus and
Scythopolis with their linenweavers. There were great ports like
Carthage or Ephesus. Other towns, like Athens, were seats of
higher education, or, like Jerusalem, centres ofpilgrimage. Others
again were important as administrative capitals of dioceses or
provinces. Alexandria, the greatest city of the empire after Rome
and Constantinople, combined many roles; a great port and in-
dustrial town, it also had a famous university and was the religious
and administrative capital of Egypt. Such towns depended little
on their territories. Some ruled large areas, but Alexandria had
no territory at all.
5
The great majority of the cities were, however, essentially rural.
They drew the greater part of their wealth from agriculture, and
their urban centres were of minor economic importance. The
average town was the market of its territory, where the peasants
sold their surplus produce and bought such few articles as they
could not obtain from village craftsmen. It was the administrative
capital of its area, the seat of the local council and magistrates,
and its religious centre, where the bishop lived. Above all it was
the social centre where the landlords of the territory resided.
Among the ordinary civitates of the empire there were striking
dilferences in size. In some areas cities were sparse and their
territories correspondingly large, in others they were densely
clustered. The reason for this anomaly was the extremely con-
servative policy followed by the imperial government throughout
its long history. When it annexed an area it normally recognised
the existing communities, and it rarely thereafter made any signi-
ficant changes. It planted a few veteran colonies on land taken from
rebel tribes or cities. It often gave municipal status to towns
which had grown up round military cantonments. It sometimes
gave independence to a town which had grown up in the territory
of a large city. On the other hand, in areas where the original
communities were very minute, it sometimes attached smaller
to larger units or amalgamated groups of small units. Such
changes, however, were not as a rule numerous enough to affect
the. basic political structure of the area, which remained fixed much
as it had been at the time of annexation. In most cases therefore
the administrative structure reflected the stage of social and political
development which the population had reached when it passed
under Roman rule.
There was one exception to this conservative policy. The Roman
government preferred to exercise indirect rule, leaving the local
administration to autonomous communities, and it therefore
usually remodelled kingdoms which had been governed on a
NUMBER AND SJZE 715
centralised bureaucratic system. Pontus was partitioned into eleven
civitates by Pompey, and Thrace was similarly divided into cities by
Trajan and Hadrian. In the Herodian and Cappadocian kingdoms
the development was gradual and was never fully completed: most
of their territory was ultimately divided into city territories but
there remained a few regiones under direct administration. In Egypt
the centralised administration was maintained for over two
centuries. Septimus Severus introduced a large measure of de-
volution by creating a council in the metropolis of each nome, or
administrative district, and making it responsible for local govern-
ment under the supervision of the strategus, the imperial district
commissioner. Diocletian completed the evolution by formally
constituting the nomes as civitates and substituting for the strategus
of the no me an exactor civitatis.
6
The conservatism of the Roman government and its results can
be illustrated by some statistics. Gallia Comata when Caesar
conquered it was occupied by some sixty large tribes, and the tres
Galliae as organised by Augustus comprised as many civitates
(according to Tacitus sixty-four): three or four colonies were
planted in the area. In provinces which correspon? to
the tres Galliae the Notltla Galliarum enumerates seventy-eight
civitates and six castra. Here and there a town has been detached
from the territory of a civitas: Cenabum of the Carnutes has
become the Civitas Aurelianorum, Bononia has been severed from
the Morini, Ecolisma from the Santones, while Cabillonum and
Matisco of the Aedui rank as castra. But the great majority of the
civitates of Gaul are identical with the tribes which fought against
Caesar, and still like them occupy wide rural territories. In Britain
the story is the same. When it was annexed the whole province
comprised under twenty large tribal civitates: to these were added
London and four Roman colonies. In the sixth century Gildas,
probably quoting from a late Roman notitia, declared that there
were twenty-eight civitates in Britain.
7
The social structure of Africa was very dilferent when it passed
under Roman rule. According to Pliny, citing the official Augustan
register, it contained no fewer than ji 6 communities, of which
six were colonies, fifteen municipia, thirty-two oppida and all the rest
tiny tribal communes (nationes). For the later empire we no
official notitia of Africa, but from the abundant ecclesiastical
documents we can trace over 5 oo episcopal sees in the provinces of
Numidia, Proconsularis, Byzacium and Tripolitania, which cor-
respond to Pliny's J:frica. Not see was a civitas, for comJ2eti-
tion between catholics and Donatists was keen, and on both sides
bishops were appointed to villae and fundi, either within the
0
716 THE CITIES
territories of civitates, or perhaps in sa!tus. There
are among the sees some .sixty titles suggest t.hat they were
estates-Villa Magna, V1cus Hateru, Horrea Coeha, and, most
characteristic Drusiliana, Frontoniana and many others formed
from a pers;nal name with the te.rmination -ana. On the other
hand some small civitates had no b1shop: Augustme ment1ons the
Municipium Tulliense, its own. duoviri an.d curia/os,
but was ecclesiastically subject t<;> himself as b1shop of H1ppo. !he
episcopal lists suggest that !\frlca had not greatly changed smce
the reign of Augustus. Bes1des Carthage there were a few dozen
towns of a respectable the old. of the coast li.ke
Lepcis, Utica or Hippo and :U the Roman
like Lambaesis or Thamugad1, but m addit10n to these there still
survived some 4oo little native townships with uncouth Berber
names.
8
In the Balkan peninsula there was a strong
I!lyricum and Thrace in the north, and Macedoma and Greece m
the south. The northern lands had before the Roman conquest
been inhabited by large tribal communities who lived scattered in
villages. There was a number of Greek cities in the coastal areas
of Thrace and under Roman rule a chain of cities developed along
the Danube, most of them by origin cantonments of the military
fortresses. But in ilie interior cities remained very few and far
between. The itinerary of the Bordeaux pilgrim vividly illustrates
how sparse cities were iJ?- north Balkan in the fourth .century.
Travelling along the roam from Aquile1a to a
journey of well over r,ooo miles, he passed only slXteen
cities, and of these eight were concentrated m the stretch of. 17.5
miles where he followed the Danube between Mursa and Vlffil-
nacium. Hierocles records only twenty-one cities in the whole
diocese of Dacia, and fifty-five in Thrace, over half of which were
in the two coastal provinces of Scythia and Europe.
9
In Macedonia and Greece on the other hand there were already
before the Roman occupation several hundred cities. In the
province of Macedonia there were according to Pliny I 5o, and
Pausanias' guide book shows that in the second century A.D. there
were more than that number in ilie southern half of Greece, ex-
cluding Thessaly and Epirus. Some the cities were
places like Thessalonica, Athens or Cormth, but the maJonty were
small, and many were no more than glorified villages. Hierocles'
lists show iliat many small cities had disappeared between the
second and the fifth century. In ilie two Macedonias and New
Epirus he records under fifty, as against Pliny's I 50 for the same
area. In Greece he enumerates about roo, of which over seventy lie
NUMBER AND SIZE
in Achaea, the area covered by Pausanias; here then the number had
been roughly halved. But despite these substantial reductions the
density of cities in the Macedonian diocese as a whole remained very
high. Without counting the twenty-two cities of Crete it had near! y
twice as many as ilie combined dioceses of Dacia and Thrace. And
within the Macedonian diocese (excluding Crete) nearly half the
cities were crowded into the tiny province of Achaea. Here
Hierocles' list testifies to the survival of many tiny places which in
Pausanias' eyes barely qualified for the title of city.IO
There was a similar contrast in ilie density of cities between ilie
dioceses of Asiana and Pontica, which covered the West and South,
the :t:-Jorth. and East of Asia Minor respectively. The areas
mcluded m As1ana correspond roughly to the Seleucid zone in
Asia Minor, and under their tolerant and somewhat ineffective
and rule local autonomy had grown and flourished.
By the tlme that ili:se areas became Roman provinces they consisted
of .an agglomerat10n of hundred communities of very
vanous s1ze and structure, rangmg from large and highly organised
cities to primitive highland clans with their hill fortresses and rural
tribes who lived scattered in villages. Pliny informs us that there
were 282 communities in the province of Asia, and 195 (including
tetrarchies, areas ruled by minor chieftains) in the original province
of t? which must be cities of the Lycian League,
which oflie1ally numbered thirty-slX, but were in fact more
numerous, since an official city was often a sympolity or group of
three or four.n
The of . Pontica, on . the ?ther hand, corresponded
.roughly w1ili ilie kmgdoms of B1thyma, Pontus and Cappadocia,
with the Paphlagonian principality and the wide territories of the
three Galatian tribes. The kingdoms had been administered on
centralised lines, and contained very few cities when iliey were
annexed. More were founded to take over the administration of the
country, but they were few and far between, each responsible for
a large territory, and some areas remained under direct adminis-
tration. The sparse distribution of the cities is once more illustrated
by the itinerary of the Bordeaux pilgrim: traversing the main road
from Chalcedon to the Cilician Gates, which ran throughout in
Pontica, he passed through only eleven cities in a journey of about
5 6o miles.I
2
By ilie sixili century the number of communities in Asiana had
been considerably reduced, mainly it would seem by the amalgama-
tion of a few large village clusters, but also by the suppression here
and iliere of the smallest cities. Over all the number of cities,
including the ten surviving tribal communes (/Jfipot), still came
718 THE CITTES
to about 330. This is a sharp reduction from the
early Principate, but again it is remarkable how many tmy
tenaciously maintained their independence in the mountam
fastnesses of Caria, Lycia, and Pisidia. In Pontica the later emperors
considerably increased the number of by detaching towns
which had grown up on the larger tern tones and partly by convert-
ing extraterritorial areas into cities. By reign the was
however still under eighty for an area considerably larger than As1ana.
In the diocese of Oriens the I So cities were more evenly dis-
tributed. The mountains oflsauria account for twenty-five, mostly
little places, the plain of Cilicia for seventeen large towns. Along
the coastal plain of .Syria, Phoenicia and Palestin.e and. in
Orontes valley the cities are closely set. Elsewhere m the mtenor
they are and territories sometimes v:ry large, except
in the provmce of where a num?er of had
raised to the status of Cltles, but the accessiOn of d1gmty had earned
with it no increase of territory. Thus Oriens also had its contrasts.
The territory of Antioch included th.e village of
miles away, and that of Apamea Tarut1a, more than thuty-five n11les
to the east while the not very important city of Cyrrhus ruled a
territory whlch, according t? was forty miles and
forty miles broad. In Arab1a D10nys1as was only four miles from
Canatha, Canatha seven miles from Philippopolis, and Philippopolis
five miles from Maximianopolis.J3
In Egypt there were besides half ol?
nomes (including the three oases), which D10clet1an ra1sed to C!Vlc
status. He founded two new cities in the Nile valley, and broke up
the desert districts of Casiotis and Libya which flanked the Delta
to the east and west: here fifteen little towns, ports or posting
stations on the roads, acquired civic rank. The diocese also
included Cyrenaica with its five ancient Greek colonies and one
Hadrianic foundation. Later emperors made little change, and the
total number of cities had by the sixth century risen by about ten
only. The distribution of was on the v.:hole even, but Egy)2t
had its contrasts. The nomes differed greatly m area: Heracleopolis
was assessed at 3 5 o,ooo artabao of wheat, its little neighbour
Nilopolis at ro,ooo only. Side by side with the great city founded
by Alexander there still survived the tiny colony of Naucratis,
planted by Greek adventurers almost three centuries before
Alexar:der's day.
14
The urbanisation of the empire was virtually complete by the
NEW FOUNDATIONS AND OLD CITIES 7I9
reign of Diocletian, who by :finally converting the nomes of Egypt
into cities brought into line the last area of any importance where
direct administration still survived. The later emperors, however,
limited though their opportunities were, still continued to found
cities and to take pride in so doing. It had been since Alexander
one of the traditional duties of a king to found cities, and tradition
still remained strong, especially in the Eastern half of the empire.
Diocletian, granting city rank to the village of Tymandus, declared
that it lay near his heart 'that throughout the whole of our domi-
nions the honour and the number of the cities should be increased',
and Constantine, acceding to the request of Orcistus, a village of
Nacoleia, to become an independent city, used language which
would have been familiar to any Hellenistic king: 'the inhabitants
of Orcistus, from now on a town and city, have furnished a welcome
opportunity for our munificence. For to us, whose aim it is to
found new cities or restore the ancient or re-establish the moribund,
their petition was most acceptable' ,1
5
The tradition is also exemplified by the grant of dynastic
names to cities to perpetuate the memory of their founders (or
refounders). In the Latin-speaking West, the practice was never
very common and remained rare in the later empire. In the Greek-
speaking East, where Hellenistic tradition was stronger, most of
the emperors of the Principate were commemorated by cities which
bore their names, and here the custom continued in full vigour.
There were at least ten cities named after Diocletian or his
colleague Maximian. There was only one Constantinople, but
four named Constantine or Constantia, as well as two in honour of
Constantine's mother Helena. Julian and his mother are com-
memorated by a J ulianopolis and a Basilinopolis, V a! ens and V alen-
tinian by three cities. No fewer than nineteen cities celebrate the
emperors of the Theodosian house and their wives, while Marcian
and Pulcheria have a couple each. Leo has five and his wife
V erina two, and there are at least four Zenonopoleis and nine
Anastasiopoleis. Justinian, as might be expected, outbids all his
predecessors with fifteen or more; but Theodora is, strange to say,
commemorated by two cities only.16
Many of these titles commemorated some temporary benefaction,
such as the rebuilding of a city ruined by war or earthquake; it was
in these circumstances that Cirta of Numidia became Constantina,
and Salamis of Cyprus Constantia. Others celebrated a constitu-
tional change. The Upper Cilbiani of Asia probably became
Valentinianopolis when they rose from a tribe to a city, and
Maximianopolis and Cons tan tine of Arabia had no doubt previously
been independent villages ("wf-'at). In other cases a dynastic name
720 THE CITIES
marks the establishment of a new city by the severance of a town
from its parent city. The name Gratianopolis probably celebrated
the promotion of Cularo of the Allobroges to the status of a
separate civitas. Other instances are Constantia, previously Maiuma,
the port of Gaza, and Constantine, hitherto Antaradus, the mainland
territory of the island city of Aradus. Again a dynastic name
might celebrate the grant of city rank to a sa!tus or regio or tractus.
Thus the regio of Lagania became Anastasiopolis and that of
Mocissus J ustinianopolis, the sa!tus of Zalichen became Leonto-
polis, and the tractus of Daranalis and Acilisene Theodosiopolis
and Justinianopolis,l7
The foundation of a city might involve building operations-
the fortification of a previously unwalled town or village, or the
erection of some public buildings. It might involve some transfer
of population; the chroniclers speak of the emperors as sometimes
transplanting the inhabitants of the surrounding countryside into
a new city, previously a mere village. But more often the change
was juridical only. Diocletian in the charter of Tymandus sets
out the steps which have to be taken that it may acquire like other
cities 'the right of assembling in council, enacting decrees and
performing other acts which are permitted by law'. The inhabitants
must elect the usual complement of civic magistrates-magistratus
proper, that is duovirs, and aediles and quaestors and any others
that may be required. And secondly the provincial governor must
enrol a council (curia). In this case the Tymandeni had assured the
emperor that a sufficiency of decurions would be forthcoming
locally, and the emperor takes note of this statement and orders the
governor to enrol fifty forthwith, expressing the hope that by the
favour of the gods the number will increase. IS
Elsewhere, where the number of substantial landowners resident
in the locality was insufficient, the emperors transplanted to it
decurions from a neighbouring city. Julian is stated to have thus
transferred decurions of Nicaea to form the council of Basilin-
opolis, hitherto a regio; and V alens ordered some of the decurions of
Caesarea to move to the regio of Podandus, which he was planning
to constitute a city. These may be exceptional cases, for in a regio
the bulk of the land would have been crown property, and the
lessees would no doubt normally be the substantial citizens of the
nearest big city.
1
9
Some new cities thus continued to be created, but new founda-
tions were rare. The great majority of the cities of which the
empire was composed had already by Diocletian's reign a very long
history, not merely as inhabited places but as political entities.
Even in the West, where history begins later, the ancient Greek and
NEW FOUNDATIONS AND OLD CITIES 721
Punic colonies like Massilia, Syracuse or Utica, and many of the
Italian towns, could boast of as long a continuous existence as
Rome itself; the Gallic civitates could look back beyond Caesar's
day; and even the Caesarean and Augustan colonies were three
centuries old. In the east Alexandria and the cities built by the
Diadochi had all celebrated their quincentenaries before Diocletian's
accession, and they were relatively modern foundations compared
with the ancient Greek and Phoenician cities.
Their citizens were proudly aware of their ancient traditions.
The orator of the Civitas Aeduorum, thanking Constantine for tax
concessions, boasts the ancient loyalty of his people to Rome,
which had earned them the title of 'fratres populi Romani' under
the Republic. Synesius, pleading for aid for Cyrene before
Arcadius, recalls its antiquity; he himself claimed descent from the
original Dorian colonists who had founded the city a thousand
years ago. Libanius in his panegyric on Antioch, not content with
recounting its historical foundation by Antigonus and Seleucus
more than six centuries ago, enlarges on its mythical prehistory,
which patriotic antiquaries had carried back to Triptolemus and Io:
Pride in the antiquity of their cities was not confined to the cultured
classes, nor did it fade with the passage of time. Malalas in his
popular chronicle still in the sixth century devoted pages to the
mythical and historical origins of his native Antioch.
2
0
Infinitely diverse though they were in their antiquity and their
origins, in their population and area and in their economic and
social structure, the cities of the empire had during centuries of
Roman rule acquired a certain uniformity in their constitutions.
From a very early date the Roman government had laid down cer-
tain general rules for the government of the provincial cities.
It had enacted qualifications of age, civil status, and, most im-
portant, property for the tenure of magistracies and membership
of the council, and it had increased the power of the council by
giving its members a life tenure, forfeited only by misconduct
or loss of the property qualification. In the \Y/ estern provinces
extensive grants of colonial or municipal status to individual
cities, and of Latin right not only to cities but to entire provinces,
had during the Principate brought even greater uniformity; for
these involved the adoption by the cities concerned of a standard
Roman constitution. Elsewhere the application by provincial
governors of general rules of law tended to produce a basic
uniformity. Much variety survived in less essential matters,
such as the titles and functions of magistrates, especially in
the Greek-speaking provinces, where Latin right was never
granted, and colonial status was sparingly given, but by the
722 THE CIT.IES
third century a uniform pattern of local government had been
established.
Of the three basic elements in the constitution, the people, the
council and the magistrates, the first had by now long ceased to
function. A constitution of Constantine reveals that in Africa it
was still customary for the magistrates to be elected by a vote of
the people, but its terms show that the popular election was a mere
formality, the magistrates being in fact nominated by their pre-
decessors. We hear of no regular assemblies after this, but when
the people assembled in the theatre or the circus to watch the
games, the presiding magistrate sometimes took the opportunity
to read out public notices. Sometimes, too, it would seem, the
provincial governor would summon a public meeting in the theatre
to read imperial letters and conduct other business. On these
occasions it was customary to shout acclamations, and the acclama-
tions often developed into demonstrations-of approval for a
popular governor or of protest against the price of bread or the
exactions of a magistrate. 21
Such acclamations were minuted. From Oxyrhynchus there
survive the minutes of an assembly, held on the occasion of some
festival under Diocletian or one of his immediate successors. The
proceedings open with reiterated acclamations: 'the Roman empire
for ever! our lords the Augusti! Long live the praeses! Long live
the rationalis! Hurral! for the president! Hurrah for the glory of
the city! Hurrah for Dioscorus, the first citizen!' and so forth-
but it presently emerges that the people want the president to
receive some honour which he is reluctant to accept, 'let a decree be
voted today for the president, he is worthy of many decrees, we en-
joy many benefits through you, president. A petition to the ration-
a/is about the president, long live the rationalis, we demand the
president for the city, rationalis', and so forth, with further acclama-
tions to the Augusti, the praeses, and the rationalis, and further
praise of the president as founder of the city, ending with the
reiterated demand: 'Let a decree be voted for the president, let it
be voted today. This is the first essential.' The president at this
stage addresses the meeting: 'I welcome the honour from you and
am very pleased at it, but I beg that such demonstrations be
deferred to a lawful occasion, when you may offer them securely
and I may receive them without peril.' The people undeterred
continue to shout their slogans until Aristion, the defensor, declares:
'We will refer the matter to the honourable council.' The people
THE PEOPLE
seem satisfied, and give utterance to more loyal acclamations,
ending with 'Prosperity to all who love the city! The lords the
Augusti for .ever!'
2
2
It is not very clear what all this was about. The people were
perhaps demanding the appointment of the president as curator
civitatis by a decree of the council, which would have to receive
the confirmation of the rationalis of Egypt. But whatever their
precise demand, it is plain that in this unconstitutional way they
made their wishes felt, and that the council took some account of
them. Such semi-official demonstrations were reported to the
imperial government, which might take them quite seriously.
Constantine in an edict to the provincials encouraged them to cheer
honest governors and boo bad ones, and promised that he would
promote or punish the governors concerned accordingly. The
acclamations would be reported to him by his praetorian prefects
and comites provinciarum, and if they were genuine and not the
product of a claque he would take action upon them.23
Acclamations were often of the latter sort, and Libanius not
infrequently warns governors of Syria not to truckle to demonstra-
tions in the theatre, which are, he declares, engineered by interested
parties through professional claques. These were, according to
him, small bodies, not more than four hundred strong in all,
consisting of disreputable ne' erdoweels, mostly not even Antio-
chenes, retained by the theatrical artistes, and willing to sell their
services to the highest bidder. The account given by Libanius,
which is confirmed by John Chrysostom, is not implausible.
Slogan shouting was, it is true, a common practice at this period.
It was done in the army, in church councils, and in the Roman
senate itself. But it cannot have been spontaneous: some cheer
leader must always have led the rest. In military parades, church
councils or the senate, the organisation would not have been
difficult, but when the populace of a city assembled in the theatre or
the circus a more professional technique was required, and the
need was filled by the trained claques of the theatrical and sporting
profession.
24
Libanius' low estimate of the theatre claques may well have been
justified, but they afforded the only medium whereby the populace,
after the loss of their political rights, could express their opinion
of the government and voice their grievances. And as in general
people will not demonstrate heartily contrary to their real senti-
ments and the cheer leaders were no doubt aware of this fact, the
organised demonstrations probably represented popular opinion
fairly accurately. Not infrequently they were effective. Even the
imperial government was sensitive to them, and the civic authorities
724 THE
must have held them in some awe. And not without reason for the
crowd, having worked itself up by shouting slogans would often
if not mollified by promises of redress, proceed f;om words
deeds, and might lynch an unpopular magistrate or burn down the
houses of decurions suspected of hoarding wheat.
The people played a humble but essential role in the administra-
tion of the city by providing its nightwatchmen, fire brigade, street
and s.ewer and craftsmen and labourers for the repair and
erectl?n of public it through the civic authorities,
supplied to the government for the public post
other These serv1ces were corvees, performed for
llnnted penods-usually a year-in rotation. The selection of
citizens for the various duties was in the West entrusted to the craft
guil.ds into which the urban population was organised. In Egypt
a different system was employed. The cities were divided into
'tribes' (gn;Jca[), which in fact wards (ll.pcpoaa), and these supplied
the r;ecessary workers m rotation, year by year. The workers were
by an officer (cp6Jcaexo' or avmaTlj' 'ii' gn;Jcij,) who in the
th1rd century, when the system was instituted was elected for the
year by a ward meeting, and probably to be so elected in
fourth. later The tribal organisation was general
m Cities, as was a Similar grouping by curiae or vici in the West,
but lt IS not known whether it was used outside Egypt for this
purpose.
25
The body of a city, and the hallmark of city rank, was
the. council (ordo, cu;za, f3ovJcf)). It was a co-optive body, whose
members, the decunons, sat for life. Its numbers varied greatly
according to the size of the city. In the West one hundred seems
been a common number, but a few cities had bigger councils,
6oo m some In the East, where large councils on the model
of the Ather;1an 500 had been customary, such numbers were
generally retruned even when the character of the council had been
changed: speaks of 6oo as being standard in
Synan Cities. .small c1t1es, however, might be content with much
smaller councils; Tymandus, as we have seen, started with only
fifty n:embers. the . other hand very large cities might have
councils of exceptional size: according to Libanius Antioch should
have had I ,zoo councillors of whom half fulfilled the munera
the on property, and the other half the munera
personalta, t?e duties . where only personal service was required.
The theoretical establishment of the councils had, however, by the
'
THE COUNCIL AND MAGISTRATES
fourth century corrie to matter very little, as they were normally
well below strength.26
The principal business of the council was to elect each year in the
first place the regular magistrates and other officers, regular and
occasional, to conduct the administration of the town and its
territory, and in the second place the officers required by the
imperial government to collect levies and taxes and .Perform the
multifarious other functions delegated by it to the cities. In the
Latin-speaking provinces most cities had a uniform set of magis-
trades on the Roman model. Two duoviri were the heads of the
government; they presided in the council, administered the
vestigial remnants of jurisdiction which the cities preserved, and
gave games. Below them were two aediles who managed the
municipal services proper, the maintenance of the streets and public
buildings, the cleaning of the streets and sewers, the water supply,
and the market. Below these again were two quaestors who saw
to the local finance. There was also a more or less standard
establishment of religious officers, the flamines or priests of the
various civic cults, and the colleges of pontifices :llld augurs; these
two last were appointed for life. The religious officers still sub-
sisted in the third quarter of the fourth century, but presumably
were suppressed by Theodosius I. 27
This standard group of magistrates was introduced sporadically
into the Greek-speaking provinces, in cities which acquired the
rank of colony and in new foundations; it was established at
Tymandus when the village was raised to city rank. In the East
however much more variety prevailed; the old Hellenistic magis-
trades had survived under the Prindpate, and, so far as our scanty
evidence goes, they continued under the later empire. A case in
point is Egypt, where of the rather peculiar group of magistrates
which the metropoleis had acquired under Augustus and which had
been completed when Septimius Severus instituted their councils,
several are traceable down to the latter part of the fourth century.
Here there was a single president (n:evrav'' or ne6eaeo') of the council;
other officers who survived were the gymnasiarch, who managed
the gymnasium and its baths, the cosmete, who is spoken of as being
responsible for the good order of the city, and the high priest, who
managed the civic cults.2s
Every city naturally had police officers. In the West their titles
are unknown. In Egypt, and perhaps in the diocese of Oriens
also, each city had two riparii, who were responsible for public
security throughout the territory, and under them two commanders
of the night watch (vvMoaearJyot), who maintained order in the
town. Elsewhere in the Eastern parts the chiefs of police, corres-
72.6 THE I T ~ E S
ponding to the riparii, were styled eirenarchs, or wardens of the
peace. From the early years of the fourth century we find in the
Eastern cities officers called praepositus pagi; the title is usually
transliterated in Greek, sometimes translated ( :n:ayaexrJ,;). They
appear to have existed throughout the Eastern parts; in an edict
issued in 3 II by Sabinus, Maximian's praetorian prefect, after
Galerius' death, provincial governors are instructed to write to
'the curatores and duoviri and praepositi pagorum of each city'. We
learn of their functions from Egyptian documents. There was a
praepositus for each of the districts or pagi into which the city
territory was divided. He appointed the village headmen and tax
collectors and constables, and was responsible for the exaction of
levies and the enforcement of the law. Some of these offices were
of long standing; eirenarchs already existed in the second century.
Riparii and praepositi pagorum first appear in the fourth century;
their Latin titles suggest that they were established by imperial
enactment.
29
The regular magistrates had by the end of the third century come
to be overshadowed by the curator civitatis (in Greek J.oyum},;).
Curatores had originally been special commissioners appointed by
the imperial government to regulate the finances of cities (or groups
of cities) which had become seriously embarrassed: they were at first
-in the second century-normally senators orequites. Appointments
had gradually become more general and regular until by the time of
Diocletian every city had a permanent curator. Under Diocletian
and even under Constantine senators were occasionally appointed
to the larger cities, but normally the government now appointed a
leading member of the local council and the post became the summit
of a curial career. It is probable that the curator was appointed on
the recommendation of the council, but he remained technically
not a municipal magistrate, but an imperial official; in the West he
still received his letter of appointment (epistula) from the central
government even in the sixth century. His original function of
controlling civic finance naturally gave him wide powers of inter-
ference in most departments of civic life, and by Diocletian's time
he seems to have become the chief of the administration for all
purposes. In the Great Persecution it was the curator who at Cirta
and other African cities confiscated the scriptures and closed the
churches and interrogated Christian recusants. so
The curator was in his turn overshadowed by another officer
nominated by the imperial government, the defensor (in Greek
aV.bt,o,; or l!"bt"o,;). He is first traceable in Egypt in the early
fourth century, where he is coupled with the curator as one of the
chief officers of the city: he acts as a judge, receiving complaints and
deciding minor cases, subject to appeal. The defensor also appears
at about the same time in the villages of Arabia, where he heads the
list of magistrates. The office may have been confined to the East,
for Valentinian I introduced it apparently as a novelty in Illyricum
and the Western dioceses generally. Valentinian attached great
importance to the office. He envisaged the defensores as the
champions of the lower orders-whence they were often styled
defensores plebis-against fiscal extortion and the oppression of the
powerful, and enacted that they should be selected by the praetorian
prefects themselves, subject to his own approval, from persons of
high official standing, former provincial governors or palatine
officials or barristers: decurions were specifically excluded.a1
These rules were not long maintained. Within twenty years, in
387, Theodosius enacted that the praetorian prefects should
appoint persons recommended by a resolution (decretum) of the local
council. The office thus became to all intents and purposes elective,
though the official appointment continued down to the sixth
century to be made by the praetorian prefects in the East and by the
king in Ostrogothic Italy. They continued to perform a useful
service in providing in minor civil issues cheaper and more
expeditious justice than did the provincial governors; in criminal
cases also and in major civil issues which were beyond their
jurisdiction they could receive the pleas and evidence and put them
on record, thus expediting the hearing of the case in the provincial
court. It is doubtful, however, whether the office effectively
fulfilled Valentinian's hopes. On the one hand defensores had in 392.
to be reminded that they must live up to their name by protecting
the decurions and the plebs from injury, and not excede their
powers by inflicting fines. On the other the office fell in prestige and
authority, and was unable to give effective protection against
palatine officials and other powerful oppressors.
32
The various officers whom the council appointed to assist the
imperial administration-the susceptores who collected the various
levies and taxes, the praepositi horreorum who had charge of the
state granaries, the officers who levied recruits for the army and
labourers and craftsmen for public works, the mancipes or conductores
of the stations of the public post, of the crown lands, of the cus-
toms, the procuratores of the mines and so forth-were for the most
part elected by the same procedure as the civic magistrates. An
exception was the exactor civitatis, the director of taxation in each
city. This office appears in Egypt early in the fourth century-
it is first mentioned in 309-where it replaces the strategus of the
nome, who had in the old regime been in supreme charge of
revenue collection: with characteristic conservatism the Egyptians
THE CITIES
continued for sixty years and more to use the old title concurrently
with the new. Like . the strategus the exactor was an imperial
appointment: in 345 Aurelius Eulogius, president of the council
of Arsinoe, wrote to his friend Flavius Abinnaeus, who was going
up to the comitatus, asking him to obtain in his name a letter of
appointment as exactor from the emperor. By 3 86 this had been
changed, and the exactor was like the susceptores elected by the
council; he was from the middle of the fourth century usually a
leading member of it. The office was probably not peculiar to
Egypt, though nearly all the evidence for it comes from that
country. The law of 3 86 which regulated elections to it is addressed
to the praetorian prefect of the East, and is apparently of general
application to all dioceses under his charge, and in the West two
senior decurions on the album of Thamugadi, which probably
dates from the early 36os, have the abbreviation EXCT, which is
probably to be expanded to EXACTOR, inscribed after their
names.
33
The procedure of election is laid down in the Codes and illustra-
ted by the papyri. Elections were normally held once a year on or
before I March, three months before the candidates entered upon
their offices: this was to allow ample time for serving notice of their
election on absentees and for possible appeals, and the by-elections
which resulted from successful appeals. A quorum of two-thirds
was required at election meetings; by a law of 3 8 I the quorum was
calculated on the effective membership of the council, excluding
the aged, the sick, the clergy, and absentees who were still on the
register though they could not be reclaimed. 34
Election is something of a misnomer for the actual proceedings,
as. there was rarely if ever a contest for the ordinary offices. The
highest posts, which were filled by imperial appointment, carried a
certain prestige, as well as authority and opportunities for profit,
and there was sometimes competition for these. Constantine had to
forbid junior decurions who were not qualified by their age or
deserts from obtaining letters of appointment as curator civitatis
by corrupt means, and, as we have seen, Aurelius Eulogius, the
president of Arsinoe, enlisted the aid of an influential friend-for
which he was prepared to pay-to obtain letters of appointment as
exactor. But by the time that they became elective these posts had
ceased to be attractive. 35
In general the difficulty was to fill all the posts. A candidate was
nominated for each post, and unless his protests carried the day the
nomination was confirmed by the council: the nominee had a right
of appeal to the governor, but unless he could successfully plead
some legal claim for exemption-such as advanced age or infirmity
THE COUNCIL AND MGISTRATES
729
in the case of offices involving personal service-he was obliged to
serve. The nominator was legally responsible for the suitability of
his nominees, and had to guarantee the proper performance of
their duties, and in particular underwrite their financial obligations.
The risk undertaken in making a nomination (pericu!um nomina-
toris) was therefore considerable, and the duty seems generally to
have devolved on the chief magistrates; in Egypt at any rate the
president of the council appears to make all nominations. By
accepting the nomination the council also corporately undertook
responsibility, and a financial deficit incurred by any magistrate
or officer duly elected could be recovered from all members of the
council in proportion to their property. This rule explains why the
imperial government, despite various experiments, always fell back
in the end on curial tax collectors and managers of services like the
post, which involved financial responsibility. It was the reason why
the office of exactor civitatis, originally an imperial appointment, was
made an elective post. The point is made very plain in a papyrus
document, which cites 'a divine constitution ordering that exactores
must be appointed on the nomination of the council', and 'two
magnificent edicts one of which commands that no one is to under-
take a curial charge without the nomination of the council, and the
other that the decurions are to [guarantee] curial charges in
proportion to the property of each'. In accordance with these
rules the decision is given 'that either Taurinus must be expelled
from the office of exactor if he was appointed without the council, or
that a levy must be made in proportion to the property of each
member if it be found that he was nominated with the consent of
the council'.
36
The elections not only to curator and defensor, which had in
origin been imperial appointments, but certain other important
offices, required imperial confirmation. Eirenarchs had to be nom-
inated by the decurions with the approval of the provincial
governor, and it appears from a debate in the council of Oxyrhyn-
chus, held in 3 70, that nominations to praepositus pagi and conductor
were confirmed by the prefect of Egypt, and, technically at
any rate, by the praetorian prefect of the East and the emperor
himself.
37
The minutes of this debate, which are preserved in full, present
an interesting picture of how the council did its work. 'After
the acclamations (the council apparently, like the people, opened its
sessions by shouting "The Roman empire for ever!" and similar
slogans), Theon, son of Ammonius, decurion, acting through his
son Macrobius, came forward and made the following statement.
"You know, fellow decurions, that I am on the list due to come into
THE CITIES
force and am among the twenty-four persons ordained by his
excellency Tatian (the prefect of Egypt) for the posts of praepositus
pagi and conductor; the president has, perhaps by inadvertence,
appointed me to the supervision of military woollen clothing for the
14th indiction, and this though I am providing horses for the games.
For this reason I claim before you that the ordinances ought not to
be infringed!" The decurions shouted: "The list must stand! the
ordinances must not be infringed!" Ptolemianus, former curator,
said: "The ordinances laid down by his excellency Tatian with the
concurrence of the whole council must remain undisturbed, so that
the twenty-four do not serve any other charge whatever, but stick
to the heaviest charges, not only in this presidency, but under
future presidents, and if anyone wishes to serve another charge, he
does not do so on the responsibility of the council. Macrobius
ought not to be troubled." Nine other speeches follow from
Gerontius, former exactor, Sarmates, former curator, Ammonianus,
former exactor, V alerius, former gymnasiarch, Macrobius and
Achilleus, the riparii, Zoilus, former gymnasiarch, Theon, former
president, and Eulogius, former gymnasiarch, who all say much the
same thing, some of them arguing further that the list had gone up
to the emperors and praetorian prefects and thus derived its
authority from them. Before the unanimous protest of the ten
senior decurions the president had to bow: "Your collective and
individual pronouncements are duly recorded in the minutes:
Macrobius will not be troubled about the supervision of military
woollen clothing for the I 4th indiction." '38
In the West the regular magistracies had to be held in proper
sequence, first quaestor, then aedile, then duumvir. Only those
who had held the duumvirate were supposed to be eligible to the
highest offices, such as curator; by this stage of his career, on the
other hand, a councillor should if possible be spared onerous
charges of less dignity, such as that of susceptor. Similar rules no
doubt applied in the East, but the sequence of magistracies was
less rigidly fixed. In the West the register of the council (album
ordinis) was drawn on strict rules of precedence, based first
on imperial rank and then on the tenure of priesthoods and
magistracies.
39
We possess a nearly complete copy of the album of the .colony of
Thamugadi in Numidia apparently drawn up in or shortly after
Julian's reign. The list opens with ten viri clarissimi, Roman
senators. Five of these are patrons of the city, and only honorary
members of the council, the other five are presumably men who
held honorary codicils which did not exempt them from curial
duties. There follow two perfectissimi, men who held honorary

731
codicils of equestrian rank, and two sacerdotales (one of whom is a
patron and the other an active member): these are men who had
held the provincial high priesthood. Next come the magistrates and
priests: first the curator and the duoviri; then thirty-two flamines
perpetui, two of whom are labelled exactores, four pontijices and
three augurs (the fourth augur was one of the duoviri of the year);
then the two aediles and the quaestors (only one place was filled this
year). We now come to the ordinary members who hold no
imperial rank or municipal magistracy or priesthood. First come
fifteen former duoviri, then about the same number of former
aediles, and three or four former quaestors. Below these come the
decurions who have held no magistracy, probably over reo in
number. Members below the rank of duoviralicii are classified as
excusati or non excusati: this presumably indicates whether they had
or had not any exemption from the humbler personal charges
to which decurions who had not reached the duumvirate were
liable.
40
This official list makes no reference to the rather elusive group of
the principa!es, to which the Codes frequently refer. They formed an
inner ring within the council, and seem to have had de facto control
of the administration; they are accused of oppressing their humbler
colleagues in the allocation of charges and levies and of forcing
them to sell their estates. They were not a mere caucus, but an
officially recognised body, a kind of executive committee of the
council, which tended to usurp its functions.
41
In African cities they were ten in number, and in Sicily they are
doubtless identical with the decemprimi. At Oxyrhynchus it may be
suspected that the ten high ranking decurions who monopolised
the debate in 3 70 were the principales of the council. At Alexandria,
on the other hand, a constitution of 436 mentions the five primates
ordinis: numbers may have varied locally. It was a necessary
qualification to have through all the series of
but obviously not all who d1d so could have hoped for membership
of so select a group. A constitution addressed in 412 to Dardanus,
praetorian prefect of the Gauls, enacted that principales were to be
elected by the council, and had to serve as such for fifteen years
before being allowed to retire. These provisions appear to be
innovations on previous practice: one may conjecture that the
principa!es were normally de facto a body. The senior
principa!is was on retirement accorded some 1mpenal rank. The
primus curiae at Alexandria was from 43 6 after five (later reduced to
two) years' service promoted to be a comes primi ordinis, which
carried honorary senatorial rank: but obviously such a high honour
was not granted to the principales of lesser cities.
42
p
732
THE CITIES
Under the Principate the revenues cities had been drawn
in varying proportions from four prmcrpal sour<;:es, the rent of
civic lands the interest on money endowments (whrch were usually
invested mortgages), local dues and taxes, and the
of councillors and magistrates, either by way of entrance fees or m
the form of munera patrimonalia ('-moveylat), that is payments
towards the specific services they were appointed to ad-
minister. Endowments, whether m land or money, were often
earmarked for special purposes. The proportion of the revenue
drawn from these sources naturally varied greatly from city to city.
Older cities tended to have accumulated larger endowments;
commercial towns gained a larger revenue from customs and market
dues. The balance which had to be met by direct contributions from
councillors and magistrates thus varied considerably. As Arcadius
Charisius explains, if money was provided from the revenues of
any city to the curator, the heating of the baths was a personal
munus only, but otherwise a mixed one, inv_olving both administra-
tive responsibility and a money contrrbutron.
43
The money endowments of the cities must have vanished during
the great inflation of the third century. taxes and lands w.ere
confiscated by Constantine and II, and after
momentarily restored by Julian, agarn confiscated by V alentmran
and V alens. The confiscation by Constantine of the temple lands
was also a loss to the cities, since these lands were administered by
them. The temple lands, restored by J ulian, were finally confiscated
by Valentinian and Valens, but their loss was la.ter balanced by the
abolition of the pagan cult to whose upkeep therr revenue had been
devoted.
44
Valens soon found it necessary to refund to the cities some pro-
portion of their rents in order to enable them to maintain their walls
and 9ther public buildings. amount was at first
variable, being calculated accordmg to the estimated of the
city concerned, and the management of the lands. was retamed by
the res privata, whose actores paid over the specified sums. The
cities complained that it was only with difficulty and after long
delays that they received the and. moreover that they
received only the fixed rents and drd not, as m the old days, profit
from extra charges of various kinds, were now pocketed
the actores rei privatae. These complamts apparently bore frurt.
From 374 a fixed proportio.n. of .the rents offormer
third, was allowed to the crtres m both halves of the emprre, and rt
CIVIC FINANCE
733
would seem that the actual lands were placed under the management
of the cities. At the same time one-third of the civic tax revenue
was refunded to the cities, but in this case, it would seem, the
management remained in the hands of the sacrae Jargitiones; twenty
years later the imperial government was again claiming the whole
of the civic tax revenue, but the cities later recovered their third
share.
45
In 400 urban sites and buildings, whether formerly the property
of the cities or of the temples, were granted on perpetual lease, but
still subject to a rent to the crown, to the councils or guilds of the
cities. In the following year the rent appears to have been remitted,
and it was enacted that if any petitioner asked for such a property, it
should be conceded only if the council concurred that the property
in question was a vacant lot which contributed nothing to the
beauty or use of the city, and furthermore that its rent should go
to the repair of public buildings. In 43 I the cities were empowered
to administer their third of the taxes instead of receiving their share
of the revenue from the sacrae Jargitiones as hitherto.46
The cities found it difficult to protect their lands from petitioners
who solicited the crown for them and from powerful persons who
illegally usurped them. Theodosius II in 443, moved by the
serious condition of Heraclea, enacted that all civic lands usurped
during the past thirty years should be restored, and Marcian in 4 5 I
issued an even more drastic law, ordering that all who had obtained
civic lands from the crown with remission of the rent since 379
should henceforth pay the rent to the cities, while retaining full
ownership.
47
Though the cities lost much of their old endowments, they also
as time went on gained some new ones. They were still entitled
to receive gifts and bequests, and if these were not as common as
under the Principate, there is evidence that they were not unknown.
A law of 472 envisages such gifts and legacies being sold for current
expenses, but in Justinian's time the city of Aphrodisias had built
up from them a considerable cash endowment fund, the interest on
which was used for maintaining the baths and public buildings.4
8
The few cities which still retained the right to claim the bona
vacantia of their citizens were deprived of this privilege by Diocle-
tian. But Constantine allowed the cities to claim the property of a
decurion who died intestate without heirs, and by subsequent
laws the estates of decurions who absconded and failed on due
summons to return were allotted to their cities. Decurions who
took orders and had no son or other relative were obliged under
various laws to surrender their property or two-thirds of it to their
cities. From 428 one-quarter of any curial estate which passed to
734
THE cnip;s
an outsider was allotted to the city, and the proportion was raised
by Justinian to three-quarters. In these ways the cities must have
accumulated some additional lands. They were also at the begin-
ning of the fifth century authorised to institute new local taxes.
4
9
The rents of the civic lands were paid into a common chest,
but these rents were stabilised at a rather low level, and allowed the
lessee a considerable margin of profit. It was the custom of
councils, which controlled the administration of the lands, to
allot the leases to their own members. This practice naturally
opened the door to jobbery. Julian severely criticized the council
of Antioch for apportioning 3 ,ooo iuga of deserted land, which he
had given tax-free to the city, to those who had no need of it; and
the profits of the decurionate, which, according to Libanius, the
leading members of the council kept to themselves, doubtless
consisted in large part of these leases. They could however be
legitimately used to subsidise those councillors who bore the
heaviest financial charges. Julian re-allotted the 3,ooo iuga to those
who annually furnished horses for the races, and Libanius
alludes to this being the normal practice of the Antiochene council:
he begged that leases of the smaller estates might be granted to his
assistant lecturers to supplement their meagre salaries. The
revenue from local taxes was also sometimes allocated to individual
decurions who undertook expensive offices.
5
0
The scope and scale of the municipal services naturally varied
according to the size and wealth of the city. Even in the second
century Panopeus, 'a city of Phocis, if one can call it a city', to
quote Pausanias, possessed 'no municipal offices, no gymnasium,
no theatre, no market, no water laid on to a fountain'. In the later
empire there were many small cities which boasted no urban
amenities. On the other hand Libanius in his Antiochicus paints a
glowing picture of the splendour and luxury of his native town.
Between these there were many cities which strove with
varying success to maintain decent standards.
51
It was the duty of the cities to preserve law and order, and all
must have possessed some kind of police force. At Antioch we
heard of paid constables, armed with truncheons. From Oxyrhyn-
chus we have a list of its sixty nightwatchmen and their beats. It
was also the responsibility of the civic authorities to regulate the
market. They enforced the use of proper weights and measures,
fixed prices and exercised a general control over the guilds of
and craftsmen. From Oxyrhynchus we have a series of
CIVIC SERVI"CES.
735
guarantees given to the civic authorities by the several guilds that
they will sell their goods at a given price. An inscription from
Sardis records . an agreement negotiated between the defensor
civitatis and the builders' guild, in which the latter agree to make
their members complete contracts which they have undertaken.52
In this sphere the most onerous responsibility of the city council
was to ensure that bread was produced in sufficient quantities
and sold at reasonable prices. Alexandria and, it would seem, some
other very large cities like Antioch and Carthage, were assisted by
regular subsidies of corn from the Imperial government, but these
subsidies did not by any means cover their needs, and most cities
had to face the problem unaided. Libanius has much to say on the
bread crises of Antioch. The first reaction of the civic authorities
was naturally to fix the price of bread, and when the bakers
resisted, to enforce obedience by ruthless flogging of the offenders.
On one occasion the bakers under this treattnent fled en masse to
mour;tains, only pers:raded to returr: by the personal
mterventwn of L1banms. If forc1ble means fa1led, the council
endeavoured to get the landiords to release stocks of grain which
they were holding up, but as the leading offenders were normally
the richest decurions, its efforts were usually ineffective. At
Caesarea it was only when Basil, the eloquent and energetic bishop
of the city, brought his influence to bear, that the landowners were
induced to disgorge. In the last resort a civic corn buyer ( <nrdwYJ;)
was elected and supplied with funds from the civic revenues or by
public subscription. Some cities maintained a regular fund for the
purchase of corn ( amonua). 53
All cities worthy of the name had a drainage system and a public
water supply. The water was often brought from a considerable
distance by aqueducts, and was piped to public fountains and to the
baths: water was also supplied to private houses on payment of a
water rate. These services naturally cost the city something in
repairs and maintenance, but much of the routine work, such as the
cleaning of the sewers, was performed by corvees. At Antioch the
streets were lit at night, but this did not involve public expenditure.
The shopkeepers were compelled to maintain oil lamps outside their
premises; Libanius protested at the action of one of the consulares
of Syria, who insisted on the number of lights being tripled, and
thus inflicted grave hardship on the humbler citizens. 54
Public baths were considered an essential amenity of civilised
life, and every self-respecting city maintained one or two; Antioch
had eighteen, one for each ward of the town. The maintenance of
these great structures must have been expensive, and the attendants
had to be paid, but the heaviest charge was the fuel, of which they
THE CITIES
consumed immense quantities. The heating of the baths is recog-
nised in imperial laws as a major charge on civic revenues, and some
cities had special funds earmarked for the purpose. But the
greater part of the expense often fell on the curial curators of the
baths: the post is frequently mentioned among the most burden-
some of the liturgies. ss
The larger cities had their education and health services, main-
taining professors of rhetoric and grammar and public doctors,
who received salaries from the civic revenues. A far heavier
charge was public entertainment. Down to the sixth century the
cities maintained the tradition of giving games-chariot races,
athletic competitions, theatrical displays and wild beast fights.
Some cities possessed endowments (agonotheticae possessiones) for
the purpose, but the bulk of the expenditure fell on the decurions.
56
The heaviest burden which fell on the civic authorities was the
maintenance of public works. In the prosperous days of the Princi-
pate the cities had indulged in an orgy of building, and had
equipped themselves with monumental temples, theatres, amphi-
theatres, stadia, circuses, baths, markets, colonnaded streets,
triumphal arches, aqueducts and ornamental fountains, often on a
scale exceeding their real needs. After the abolition of the pagan
cult the temples became superfluous. A few were preserved as
public monuments, and some were converted into churches, but
the majority were either demolished or allowed to decay, being used
as quarries for building material. But most of the other buildings
were still needed, and had to be kept in repair, and, if destroyed by
fire or earthquake, rebuilt, usually on a more modest scale. More-
over, as conditions became more insecure, fortifications, which had
been neglected in the peaceful days of the Principate, became
essential. During the fourth century many cities had to build new
walls, or to reduce their old circuits, which were decayed and too
extensive to maintain and to man.
The work was done on the cheap. The stone was invariably
reused blocks, and forced labour was employed: Libanius protested
that the urban craftsmen and shopkeepers were compelled to haul
columns or pay substitutes for the work, and that peasants bringing
produce to the town were made to carry out builders' rubbish,
overloading their donkeys and ruining their sacks. Nevertheless
some material had to be bought and skilled workmen had to be
paid: the curator of Oxyrhynchus in 316 received a bill from the
smiths' guild for a hundredweight of iron 'for public civic works'
and an estimate from a painter for decorating the Trajanic Hadrianic
baths. 5
7
It was because their walls and public buildings were falling into
THE CUR/ALES_
737
ruin that Valentinian and V alens refunded a third of their rents and
taxes to the cities, and the maintenance of public works was
regarded as a first charge on their revenue. Special superindictions
were also raised from time to time. But funds evidently did not
suffice. Even such essential buildings as walls and aqueducts fell
into ruin, and the emperors had to undertake the task of restoring
them. 5
8
It is impossible to estimate how much of the local expenditure
was covered by public revenue and how much by the decurions in
the form of liturgies. The proportion must always have varied
greatly from city to city, according to the quantity of their en-
dowments and the yield of their local taxes and the scale of their
expenditure. The confiscation of the civic lands and taxes certainly
put an intolerable strain on the decurions, and resulted in a disas-
trous neglect of public works. When the cities recovered a third
of their old lands and taxes, and as they gradually acquired new
endowments, the situation was eased, but in the meantime the
richer decurions had been escaping from the curia, and the curial
class was as a whole less able to support heavy liturgies. On the
other hand, as time went on, the cities lowered their standard of
living: games were reduced in number and pruned of their ex-
travagances, and superfluous buildings were. .. By and
large, it would seem, the burden on the decunons did not Increase,
and ultimately, with the growth in endowments and the reduction
of public services, decreased .. By the reign of Justinian it is implied
by the language both of the Novels and of Procopius that the
expenses of the cities were normally covered by their regular
revenues, and that for emergencies, such as large repairs, special
levies were raised from all local taxpayers.
59
In any discussion of the curial order it is important to remember
that, though juridically it was a single class, whose members all
enjoyed the same privileges and were subject to the same obliga-
tions, socially and economically it covered a wide range. Libanius'
letters and speeches show that in the latter part of the fourth century
the leading decurions of gaye games on a :nagr:ificent
scale, buying horses from Spam and wild beasts from and
were the social equals of the great senators of Constantinople. At
the other extreme Caecilianus, duovir of Aptungi at the opening of
the Great Persecution, seems to have been an illiterate weaver who
took his meals with his workmen, and Ingentius, whom he em-
ployed as his clerk during his year of office, was a decurion of
THE CITIES
Ziqua. A century later Augustine recounts a curious story of 'a
man called Curma, a poor curialis of the Municipium Tulliense
which is near Hippo, just a former duovir of the place, a simple
peasant'. And not only were small town decurions very different
people from those of great cities, but on the same council there was
a wide divergence between the leading members, who pocketed
the profits and perquisites, and their humble colleagues, on whom
they thrust the disagreeable jobs.
6
o
The qualifications for membership were in the first place origin
or domicile in the city concerned; a man might be compelled to be
a decurion both in the city of his origin and in that of his domicile.
Secondly free birth was required; the old ban against freedmen is
still preserved in Justinian's Code. Thirdly, and most important, a
property qualification was demanded. The property was normally,
as the Codes make abundantly clear, land. Decurions are forbidden
to evade their duties by retiring to their country estates. They
are not allowed to alienate their rural or urban properties without
licence. A merchant who has bought some farms might be enrolled
on the council. It was a concession to the cities of Moesia that
they might elect commoners whose wealth lay in slaves. This was
partly perhaps because real property was better security; ships
might be wrecked and slaves die or abscond. But the basic reason
why the curial class was, by and large, a class of landowners was
that land was the most important form of property and source of
wealth in the empire. at
The amount of the property qualification must have varied from
city to city. The obligations whiclt a decurion of Carthage had
to undertake would have been of a very different order of magni-
tude from those which fell on the decurions of, say, Aptungi or
Tagaste, and the richest inhabitants of these little country towns
were very humble folk, whereas the great city of Carthage had
many great landlords on its citizen roll. A constitution of Con-
stantius II, which lays down that no one holding over 2 5 iugera of
private land is to be excused membership of the council on the
score that he is also a lessee of imperial land, and that even. those
who own less than 2 5 iugcra are to be enrolled, if they lease little
imperial land, is not to be taken as a general ruling. It deals with
a special case, referred by the comes Orientis to the emperor, and
must have concerned one of the villages which ranked as cities
in Arabia, or perhaps a tiny hill town in Isauria: for 2 5 iugera is a
peasant. holding. A constitution issued by Valentinian III a
century later, which authorises any citizen or resident of a city
whose property exceeds 300 solidi to be enrolled on its council,
was no doubt of general application. But it lays down a minimum
THE CUR/ALES
739
only, which is incidentally much higher than that of Constantius'
law, for 300 solidi represented something like I 50 iugera; and by
this time so many of the greater landlords had secured immunity
that even important cities must have had to enrol relatively poor
men.
62
Membership of the council was already in the third century
compulsory on qualified persons who were nominated, unless they
could claint some legal immunity. Membership was therefore in
practice hereditary, since the existing councillors necessarily
possessed the property qualification, and were in fact normally
the richest men in the city, and their sons inherited their property.
Sons of decurions were nominated as soon as they came of age,
that is in their eighteenth year: in 3 31 Constantine, learning that
in some cities children of seven or eight were being nominated,
had to reaffirm this age limit. Outsiders might be nominated to
fill gaps, and the laws of Diocletian and Constantine usually place
the same restrictions on qualified commoners as on decurions
and their sons.
63
Later restrictive laws confine themselves to hereditary curia!es,
and the enrolment of plebeians is rarely mentioned. Julian, who
attached great importance to reviving the city councils and was, if
Ammianus is to be believed, unduly harsh in the measures that
he took to that end, encouraged the cities to enrol commoners:
'plebeian citizens of the same town, whom ample means have
advanced to support the burdens of decurions, may be nominated
in regular form'. In 393 Theodosius, in a constitution issued to
Rufinus, praetorian prefect of the East, ordered that resident
non-citizens and others who had no other claim on their services,
if suitable, be enrolled. In the West Honorius in 4I 5 enacted that
those who were not members of any other corporation should be
enlisted in the cnria or co!!egia of their cities. V alentinian III in 439
authorised the enrolment in the curiae of all persons whose property
exceeded 300 solidi. Such occasional attempts to round up all
available persons suggest that in the ordinary course the city
councils did not recruit members from outside, and indeed imply
that the bottom of the barrel had been scraped fairly dry. Apart
from these general measures there are two laws which authorise
special measures in greatly impoverished provinces, Moesia (383)
and Tripolitania (393). The former law authorised the councils
to enrol plebeians, whose property consisted in slaves, the latter
ordered the enrolment of all persons qualified by the possession
of land or money. They are both evidently emergency measures.64
A law of 443 enabled fathers to legitimise their natural sons, if
they had no legitimate issue, and bequeath their property to them,
THE CITIES
provided that they enrolled them in the curia of their native city.
Outsiders were also sometimes enrolled on the curiae as a quasi
penal measure. Sons of veterans, if they refused to serve or were
physically unfit, were by a series of enactments ranging from
Constantine to Gratian compulsorily enrolled: there is no later
reference to this practice, and it no doubt ceased when the govern-
ment no longer gave veterans allotments ofland. In 365 Valentinian
I had to enact that no one should be enrolled in the city councils,
'whose splendour is very dear to us', who had not been duly
nominated and elected by the council itself, and that no one should
become a member for a fault for which he ought to have been
struck off the roll. A later law (3 84) suggests that provincial
governors were in the habit of relegating to the curia of their
origin those of their officials whom they found guilty of mis-
conduct, and this was probably the abuse which Valentinian
forbade. It was however later (in 442 and 47I) enacted that officials
of the province who, contrary to regulations, secured posts in the
higher branches of the service should be cashiered and enrolled
on their city councils. Furthermore by a law of 408 unfrocked
clergy were enrolled, according to the amount of their property,
either in the curia or in one of the guilds of their city.65
It would appear that from about the last quarter of the fourth
century the intake of outsiders virtually ceased, probably because
all qualified landowners had either already been enrolled or had
secured for themselves some status which gave them immunity.
From this time the curial order became by and large a closed
hereditary caste. The preservation in the Code of Justinian of
laws of Diocletian forbidding slaves and freedmen from aspiring
to the curia may indicate that some persons of very humble status
did enrol themselves in order to improve their social position;
we know in fact of a slave of the Roman church who in the last
years of Justinian's reign, on the strength of the peculium which
he had amassed, had 'the audacity to usurp for himself the title of
curialis in order to escape from his proper servile status'. But
such cases must have been rare, nor can the accession oflegitimised
bastards, delinquent officials and unfrocked clergy have added a
significant number of new members.
On the other hand the curial class suffered a continuous leakage
which the imperial government may by its reiterated legislation
have to some extent controlled, but which it certainly did not stem.
The outlets for escape available to the various strata of the curial
order naturally varied greatly. The richest aspired to a place in
the imperial aristocracy, that is down to the middle of the fourth
century the equestrian order and the comitiva, thereafter the senate.
THE CUIUALES
741
The earlier phase of this movement was less dangerous to the
well-being of the cities in that in law equestrian status and the rank
of comes were personal and the sons of those who secured promo-
tion remained decurions-though naturally their fathers would and
could use their influence to get them promoted also. The govern-
ment at this stage did not object to decurions holding the offices
which carried equestrian rank or a comitiva; indeed with the rapid
expansion of the administrative hierarchy under Diocletian and
his successors it was obliged to recruit extensively from the curial
class, which comprised the men best suited by their status and
education to fill the new posts. It ouly endeavoured to insist on
two points, that decurions must hold the regular series of offices
in their native cities before applying for an imperial post, and that,
to secure immunity, they must hold or have held genuine posts
and not honorary codicils of the comitiva or of the perfectissimate,
ducena, centena or egregiate, or the fictive rank of former praeses or
former rationalis. Repeated constitutions prove that the imperial
government was quite incapable of controlling these abuses.
66
As from the latter part of Constantine's reign more and more
posts came to carry senatorial rank, the ambitions of the richer
decurions became more dangerous to the welfare of the cities.
For senatorial rank was hereditary, and thus not merely an indi-
vidual but a whole family secured immunity for all time with
each promotion. The danger had evidently become serious by 36I,
when Constantius II debarred decurions from access to the senate,
and existing senators of curial origin were deprived of their rank.
In 364 Valentinian and Valens initiated a new policy. It was im-
practicable to close the higher grades of the imperial service
altogether to the class best qualified to fill them, and a compromise
was devised. A decurion before becoming a senator must perform
his civic offices, and he must leave a son or sons to carry on the
family burden in the curia. This principle was elaborated by
Valens in 371. A decurion who had no son was debarred from
the senate; if he had one only he must leave him in his native
curia; if he had several he might transmit his senatorial rank to
one only; and with this exception only sons born to him after he
became a senator inherited his rank. It was furthermore enacted
that honorary grants of posts carrying senatorial rank carried no
immunity, but the same law confirmed the position of all decurions
who had entered the senate before 360, and allowed many excep-
tions in favour of those who had since been promoted. 67
In 38o and in 382 two laws, both addressed to the praetorian
prefect of illyricum and perhaps limited to that sorely tried
prefecture, ordered the restoration to their cities of all senators of
742 THE CITIES
curial origin. Apart from this the compromise of 3 7I remained in
force till 3 86, when a new policy was tried by Theodosius in the
East. Henceforth decurions might be admitted to the senate, but
remained with all their descendants, liable to curial charges. This
rule difficult to enforce and in 392 an absolute ban was
once more imposed on entering senate. Next year
this ban was relaxed, and decunons were agam allowed to become
senators provided that their property remained subject to their
curial charges, which they might perform by deputy. In the West
the principles laid down in 364 seem to have remained in force.
Honorius' government relaxed them in 397, exempting not only
the sons of curial senators born after their promotion, but all the
sons of those who rose to illustrious rank. In the East the regula-
tions were tightened up. A law of 398 forbade decurions to hold
provincial governorships, which now carried the clarissimate, and
another of 4I6 prohibited them to obtain codicils of that rank.
68
Decurions nevertheless continued to obtain offices or codicils of
the higher grades of spectabilis and illustris, and in 436 the govern-
ment capitulated, confirming the status of existing senators of curial
origin who held these higher grades of honour and permitting
decurions to obtain them in the future. At the same time it revived
in a modified form the policy of 3 86, enacting that spectabiles
must continue, with their descendants, to perform their curial
duties in person and that honorary illustres should remain financially
responsible, but might perform their offices by deputy. Decurions
who had held illustrious offices obtained full immunity for them-
selves and for sons born after their promotion. This compromise
again proved unsatisfactory, for the government very soon (in
439) found that curial senators, burdened with the praetorship,
were-or alleged that they were-unable to meet their curial
charges. It accordingly remitted the praetorship to existing senators
of curial origin, but forbade decurions for the future to aspire to
the senate. Despite this law wealthy decurions still managed to
secure codicils of illustrious rank, and only five years later a
special ban was laid on their holding illustrious offices or equivalent
honorary rank.
69
This prohibition was not maintained, but the virtual abolition
of the praetorship by Marcian, and his remission of the senatorial
surtax, the Jollis, deprived curial senators of a legitimate excuse
for evading their civic burdens, and made it possible for the
government to insist on the rules laid down in 436. They were
tightened up by Zeno, who struck off the minor illustrious offices
from the exempt list. Henceforth only decurions who served as
praetoria!l or urban prefects or masters of the soldiers, or who
THE CURIALEiS
743
were honoured with the consulate or patridate, obtained, together
with their sons born after their promotion, immunity from curial
charges.
70

This legislation dealt only with the highest strata of the cur.ial
order. For while it was possible for a relatively poor man to
in the imperial service by merit, it was more t? obtai.n
offices by interest or bnbery, and only those w1th
connections and ample means could pull the necessary strmgs
and afford the substantial suffragia required. Honorary codicils
were the legal reward of long se::vice in some favoured palat.ine
ministries and at the bars of the highest courts, or for undertaking
the expensive honour of a provincial high priesthoo?, but the:y: were
normally obtained, as the emperors tu;ne and .agam by
graft or corruption, and only the most nch and mfluent!al decunons
could secure them.
Those of less exalted status and more modest means tried to
find a refuge in the civil service. The palatine ministries were the
most attractive, being both lucrative and privileged; by the latter
part of the fourth century long service in the more important
offices was rewarded with senatorial rank. Access to them was
correspondingly difficult and expensive; by the middle of the
fifth century places in the best offices were legally sold, and had
doubtless long before then been obtainable only by purchase.
Next below these came the offices of the praetorian prefects and
masters of the soldiers, then those of vicars and proconsuls and
finally those of ordinary governors .. fou_nd
their way into all of these: m officta,.which
was like curial status, a hereditary obhgation from which no
prot'notion was legally permissible, can have attracted only the
humblest.
The imperial government at first allowed curiales to enter the
palatine ministries but in 341 ordered all who had served less
than five years to be sent back to their cities. Thereafter periodic
purges were held which became progressively severer. In the
middle of the fourth century, fifteen, twenty or twenty-five years
of service were required, the conditions varying from time to
time in the several ministries: in 382 thirty years were demanded
in all the ministries: from 3 89 no length of service gave
of tenure. In 423 it was enacted that after fifteen years ID: the
agentes in rebus, the sacra scrinia, the largitiones and the ;es przvata,
and also in the offices of the P.refects? a decunon. was no
longer liable to be sent back to his cunal duties, but _agam
436 no length of service was allowed to count, and tlns remamed
the rule under Justinian.
71
744
THE CITIES
Thus in principle decurions were from 34I ineligible for the
palatine offices, being always liable to be sent back to their curiae,
and even if they secured personal immunity by long service, their
sons remained curia!es. To these rules there were only two legal
exceptions. From 4I 3 a decurion who rose to the highest grade,
that of princeps, in the corps of the agentes in rebus, secured im-
munity for himself and for his sons born after his promotion, and
in Justinian's time the same privilege was enjoyed by those who
rose to be proximi of the other most favoured ministry, the sacra
scrinia; it is not recorded when this privilege was granted. But in
view of the very spasmodic way in which the imperial government
enforced the law, it seems likely that in fact a large number of
decurions succeeded in freeing themselves and their families in
perpetuity by service in the palatine and other superior ojjicia.72
Towards the humbler curia!es who sought refuge in the lesser
ojjicia the government was more ruthless. In 32 5 all decurions
were recalled from the provincial ojjicia save those in the final
stage of service and already liable to the pastus primipi!i, and there-
after no length of service gave security. Whether the government
was successful in enforcing the law is more doubtful. Such humble
fry were difficult to trace if they migrated to another province
and entered its ojjicium, where they would be unknown, and by
the end of the fourth century the government had to rule that if
they failed to return when cited by edict, their estates should be
forfeit to their native councils. 73
Curia!es also sought to free themselves by service in the army.
It .no ?oubt the humblest who enlisted as privates in
the !tmttanet or comtfatenses or as craftsmen among the fabricenses
but those of higher station joined the imperial guard (the scho!ae)
or the corps of the protectores et domestici or secured commissions
as tribunes or praepositi. Diocletian debarred decurions from
milit.ary service, but a long series of constitutions shows that they
to. defy the law down to Justinian's day. In the army
as m the ctvil servtce the government from time to time allowed
who had completed varying terms of service to finish their
ttme. In 3 57 only five years' service in the comitatenses gave a man
in 362 ten years .it;t the limitanei, inJ82 and 383 five years
m the protectores et.domesttct, and fifteen in the ranks. After this no
concessions are recorded. Some decurions obtained the benefits
of m!litary with?ut undergoing its toils and dangers by
securmg certificates of dtscharge as ex protectoribus: this abuse was
naturally the government, which in 397 allowed
them to keep thetr ficttve rank but without the immunity which
was attached to it. 74
THE CURIALBS
745
The privileges of other forms of sta:te service, which under the
Principate had given immunity from curial charges, were whittled
down or abolished. Decurions were from 383 forbidden to
undertake the contracts for the imperial customs, and where, as in
Egypt, they were compelled to do so, the contract was treated as a
normal curial charge. After 342 they no longer secured immunity
by leasing state lands. Until the end of the fourth century they
could escape from the curia by joining one of the corpora navi-
culariorum and making their property subject to that charge, but
from 3 90 the status of a navicularius and a curialis became compatible,
and curiales who acquired lands subject to the navicu!aria Junctio
could not claim exemption from their civic duties, but simul-
taneously bore the charges attached to either category of land,
their original curial estates and the navicular estates which they
had acquired.
75
Practice at the bars of the great courts of appeal, those of the
praetorian and urban prefects, might also earn immunity for
decurions. They were required to complete their civic services
before beginning to practise, and in the West, according to a law
of Valentinian Ill dated 442, obtained after twenty years (when
they had to retire) or fifteen years (if they took up another career
before reaching the retirement limit) the rank of vicar with
immunity from curial burdens. In the East they had apparently
enjoyed a similar privilege until in 436 they were excluded for the
future from admission to these superior bars. This ban was
reiterated three years later in 439, but in 440 barristers in the court
of the praetorian prefecture of the East who reached the summit
of their career by attaining the post of patronus fisci were rewarded
with immunity from the curia for themselves and all their sons.
This privilege was extended in 5 oo to the court of the Illyrian
prefecture, and at an unknown date to that of the urban prefecture.
That curiales continued despite the legal ban to be admitted to the
superior bars is shown by the fact that Justinian restricted the
immunity granted to the sons of patroni fisci to those born after
their fathers' promotion.76
The doctors and professors of rhetoric and grammar in the
service of the cities enjoyed a personal immunity from curial
charges. This privilege was never restricted or withdrawn, no
doubt because the number of persons involved was small and the
exemption did not lend itseif to abuse. 77
When Constantine in 313 with a convert's zeal declared the
Christian clergy immune from curial charges, he opened an
avenue of escape which decurions were quick to exploit. Twelve
or fifteen years later he had to limit the number of the clergy,
THE CITIES
ruling that none be ordained except to fill vacancies caused by
death, and to prohibit entirely the ordination of men of curial
family or fortune. This absolute ban, which was clearly unjust to
bona ftde ordinands of means, was later withdrawn, and a curialis
was allowed to take orders provided that he demonstrated his
sincerity by surrendering his property to his sons or failing these
to a relative who would take his place on the council, or if he had
no relatives, to the council itself: in the two latter cases he could
keep a third for himsel.7
8
By 36I these rules had been generally relaxed, bishops being in
all cases allowed to retain their property, and the lower clergy also,
if ordained with the approval of the curia. V alentinian and V alens
tightened up the rules, insisting that decurions must in all cir-
cumstances surrender all their property on ordination, and
Theodosius re-enacted this regulation, which had evidently fallen
into abeyance, making it retrospective to 388. In 398 the govern-
ment of Arcadius reimposed an absolute ban on the ordination of
curiales, and in 439 and again in 45 2 that of V alentinian III took the
same step in the West. These laws were not however rigorously
enforced-that of 439 makes express provision for cases when a
curialis 'shall have hastened to the service of the clergy even
contrary to the prohibitions of the laws in the devotion of his
heart'. As a rule the higher clergy-bishops, priests, deacons and
subdeacons-were allowed to retain their position if once ordained,
but had to surrender two-thirds of their property, while the lower
clergy were put back on to the council. 79
Justinian in 53 I introduced a severer test for curial ordinands.
Holding that 'it would not be right for a cohortalis or curialis, bred
in harsh exactions and the sins which are therefore likely to ensue,
at one moment to carry out the cruellest acts and the next to be
ordained a priest and preach about loving kindness and contempt
for wealth', he enacted that a curialis might be ordained only if
before reaching man's estate he had entered a monastery and
completed fifteen years; he had also to surrender one-quarter,
later raised to three-quarters, of his estate. Except by one law of
Valentinian Ill (45 2) curiales were never forbidden to enter
monasteries, provided that they proved the genuineness of their
vocation by surrendering their estates : if they failed to do so
they were by a law of 3 70 recalled to their duties, or if they refused
to return, their estates were forfeited to the curia.80
It was probably only the humblest decurions who sought
refuge under the patronage of 'powerful houses', which could
assure them de facto if not de jure immunity. As early as ;r 8
Constantine_ enacted severe penalties against decurions who married
THE CURIALES
747
the slaves of great men and against the great landlords or their
agents who connived at such marriages; it is significant that the
decurion concerned often alienated his property to his wife's
owner. Other laws in 362, 37I, 382, 395, prohibit this kind of
patronage, in particular forbidding decurions to become land
agents of the powerful. By the middle of the fifth century, this
abuse was evidently common in Italy, where great landlords were
many and the surviving curiales mostly very humble folk. Majorian
in 4 58 ordered a general round-up of decurions from the great
estates. Many had married colonae or slave women: in the former
case the sons were recalled to the curia with their father, in the
latter they were relegated to one of the city guilds.
81
The councils were weakened not only when their members in
one way or another secured personal or hereditary inlmunity, but
also when they alienated their property by sale, gift or will.
Decurions might sell their estates to obtain ready cash to buy an
imperial office or codicil which would raise them to senatorial
rank, or a lucrative palatine militia. Or they might give them or
sell them on advantageous terms to a powerful patron whose
suffragium would secure them advancement. If childless they could
similarly gain useful patrons by promising them their estates on
their decease, if they had daughters only they would marry them
to powerful persons. Many curiales, to free their hands, refrained
from lawful marriage; their bastard sons were both legally incapable
of inheriting their estates and ineligible for the curia. But it was
not only ambitious decurions who alienated their estates. It
appears both from Libanius' speeches and from the imperial
constitutions that humble decurions often sold their lands under
pressure to their wealthier colleagues or to great men not on the
council who wished to round off their estates.
82
It was to guard against this last abuse that in 3 86 Theodosius
forbade a decurion to sell any of his real estate without official
authorisation from the provincial governor, who was not to give
his consent save for a reasonable cause, such as payment of debts.
Under such a procedure, the emperor thought, 'a vendor ought
not to complain that he has been tricked or intimidated by the
purchaser'. This law, though of general application, came to be
enforced only when the purchaser was a principalis, one of the
chief decurions of the vendor's city, but in 423 it was expressly
extended to all sales by decurions, whoever the purchaser. Zeno
ruled that the law did not apply to deeds of gift, but Justinian
extended it to these also. 83
The problem of inheritance was first tackled in 428 by a law
which entitled the curia to claim one-quarter of any estate left by a
Q
THE CITIES
decurion by will or intestacy to an outsider. This was followed
in 442 by the law, already mentioned above, a father
could legitimise his natural sons by oblatio cur!ac: this law was,
however only permissive and probably had httle effect. These
laws we;e consolidated in 443 and once again in j28 by Justinian,
who stopped up various loopholes. In 5 36 Justinian raised the
share of the curia from one quarter to three quarters, by a
complicated s:r!es of rules to enst;re that e1ther a
decurion's legltlmate sons, or h1s. natural sons, 1f offered to
curia by their father or volunteerl?g to themselyes, . his
sons-in-law (whether they roamed legltlmate or !lleg1t!mate
daughters), provided that they were or became decurions, or any
fellow decurion not connected by blood or marriage, or in the last
resort the curia itself, should inherit at least three-quarters of any
curial estate. In 5 39, on the petition of certain curialcs, Justinian
permitted a decurion's estate to pass to any outsider, provided that
he undertook the testator's curial position. Eventually curial
charges thus became, as had the functio navicularia far earlier, a
servitude on certain lands.s4
From this vast and tangled mass of legislation two points emerge
clearly, that the imperial government considered the maintenance
of the city councils essential to the well-being of the empire, and
that many members of the city col;lncils strongly tht;ir
position. To the emperors the decunons were, as P?t 1t:
'the sinews of the commonwealth and the hearts of the c1t1es . In
the former capacity they collected and underwrote the imperial
levies and taxes, repaired the roads, administered the public post,
conscripted recruits for the army, managed the mines; and though
the government attempted _on occasion to find for
them in one or other of the1r many roles, such expenments were
shortlived. As 'the hearts of the cities' they maintained those
amenities of urban life, in particular the baths and the games,
which were in Roman eyes essentials of civilized life. It is therefore
understandable that the emperors-and the Ostrogothic and Visi-
gothic kings-should have maintained a dogged struggle for
three centuries to keep the city councils in being.ss
The motives from which decurions persistently sought to
escape from the councils are more difficult to determine, and
varied according to their wealth and status and according to their
individual ambitions and tastes. It need not be assumed that
decurions never took holy orders from a genuine sense of vocation
and never joined the army because they preferred an active and
adventurous life. For the upper strata of the curial class, at any
rate, the financial motive was not important. Not only were the
THE CUR/ALES
749
financial burdens well within their means, but as leading members
of the council they enjoyed, Libanius asserts, many pickings, and
could pass on the more onerous tasks to their poor colleagues.
They no doubt resented their curial charges, for no one willingly
pays supertax, and they shook them off when they could, but in
aspiring to senatorial rank they were not only willing to incur
a heavy initial outlay in suffragia, but to saddle themselves with
the senatorial surtax, the follis, and with the praetorship, which was
a more expensive charge than any curial munus.
86
Many were no doubt ambitious, and wanted scope for their
talents in the administrative hierarchy, or the power which
imperial office gave, or the almost unlimited opportunities which
it offered for acquiring further riches. But many wealthy curialcs,
perhaps the majority, did not aspire to office, but were content to
obtain honorary codicils which merely conferred at first equestrian,
later senatorial rank. With them one motive may have been to
escape from the dreary round of personal duties which fell to a
decurion. Libanius compares favourably the life of slaves with
that of decurions, and draws a vivid picture of them rushing at
dawn to attend a suddenly summoned meeting, still blinking and
sleepy, or missing their baths and leaving their dinners half eaten,
to find themselves saddled with the repair of the roads, the re-
building of a bridge, the arrest of brigands or the exaction of
annona. Even more impressive are the long lists of muncra pcrsonalia,
charges which involved not expenditure but personal service,
given by the Diocletianic lawyers Hermogenian and Arcadius
Charisius-the production of recruits or horses; the production
or transport or convoy of other animals or of foodstuffs or
garments; the charge of the public post and the provision of
emergency teams; the duty of buying corn or oil for the city;
the heating of the baths; police duties; roadbuilding; the inspection
of the sale of bread and other foodstuffs; the collection and
distribution of annona; the collection of the capitatio in money;
the collection of the civic revenues; the erection or repair of
public buildings, palaces, docks, post stations; not to speak of the
provision of games. It is not it esteemed a
privilege. to be allowed. to perforl? .o_ne s cunal dut1es by deputy,
still bearmg full financ1al responslbility.S7
More important was the desire for the prestige and the security
which senatorial rank afforded. This is stated in so many words by
Theodosius II. 'We have learned that certain curialcs, wishing to
escape from the injuries of provincial governors, take refuge in
the prerogative of the senatorial dignity.' J?:curions, it is true,
enjoyed as honestzorcs a number of legal pnvileges. They could
THE CITIES
not lawfully be flogged or tortured, and they were immune from
the more degrading capital sentences, such as condemnation to
the mines, and indeed from the death penalty: relegation, that is
exile with loss of property, was the maximum legal penalty to
which they were subject, and this could only be inflicted after
reference to the emperor. These privileges were, however,
increasingly ignored during the fourth century by provincial
governors. Two laws of Constantius II forbid governors to
inflict corporal injuries on decurions, two more of Theodosius I
threaten governors with the severest penalties if they flog decurions
with lashes weighted with lead. Despite these recent laws the
flogging of curiales, Libanius protests, went on, and he cites many
actual cases. In 3 87 Theodosius officially permitted governors. to
flog (with the lashes loaded with lead recently prohibited)
decurions who had embezzled public money, or been extortionate
in collecting or corrupt in assessing taxes. By 436 immunity from
corporal punishment was accorded as a privilege to the five
leading members of the council of Alexandria, the governing body
of the third city of the empire. Libanius is insistent that the
flogging of decurions was the major cause of the decline of the
councils. 'It is this', he wrote to Theodosius, 'it is this that has
chiefly emptied the council chambers. There are perhaps other
causes, but this especially, lashes and subjection to such corporal
injuries as not even the most criminal slaves endure ... In many a
city, your majesty, after these floggings this is what the few
surviving decurions say: "Goodbye house, goodbye lands! Let
the one and the other be sold, and with their price let us buy
liberty." '
88
Simple security against maltreatment was not of course the
only privilege which senatorial rank gave, and decurions who
sought admission to the senate expected to gain larger and less
harmless advantages for themselves. A senator, by virtue of
praescriptio fori, enjoyed some measure of immunity from the
jurisdiction of provincial governors and vicars. Governors were
moreover clarissimi at most, and vicars spectabiles, and any decurion
who got into the senate thus became the equal in dignity and
precedence with his governor, and if he secured illustrious codicils
the superior even of vicars. Theodosius II in 439 commented on
the administrative difficulties to which this gave rise: 'But you also
observe', he wrote to the senate, 'that the fact that by their promo-
tion in rank they shake themselves free from the respect due to
governors damages the public interest: for the collection of arrears
goes slowly if the executive authority has to pay deference to the
debtor.'
89
,,
THE CURJALES
7JI
Five years later an extraordinary incident gave point to the
emperor'.s r e m a r ~ s 'Valerian, a curialis of the city of Emesa, a
rebel agatnst public law and order, undeservedly and surreptitiously
secured an office of illustrious rank with the object that, relying on
the insignia of this dignity, he might enlarge to the full his in-
sulting design. Surrounded by a great horde of barbarians he
burst into the court of the provincial governor, dared to claim for
himself a superior position, took his seat on the. right hand of him
to whom we have committed the laws, to whom we have thought
fit to entrust the fate of the provincials, turning out all his officials
and leaving desolation and solitude. As criminal as he is wealthy,
he sheltered the other curiales also in his house, and, to defraud the
public revenue, he opposed, in defiance of public order, a body-
guard of slaves to the collectors of arrears, with the result that
our treasury suffered a grave loss through his mad action.' V ale-
rian' s sole punishment was loss of his illustrious rank, despite which
he was allowed to perform his curial duties by deputy.9o
Much the same mixture of motives, blended in varying pro-
portions, impelled decurions of lower degree to seek other avenues
of escape. The poorer they were, the weightier was the financial
motive. Curial charges were not adjusted according to property,
and a burden which would be negligible to a wealthy decurion
might be crushing to a poorer colleague. The iniquity of the system
was aggravated by the fact that the richer members of the council
generally took advantage of their position to allot the heavier
charges to their poorer colleagues. And as in progress of time the
wealthy curial families secured permanent exemption, the rump of
poor decurions who were left naturally found the burden more
oppressive. 91
At the same time it must be observed that the great majority
sought refuge in careers which were lucrative and opened up
prospects of social advancement, and improved or at least pre-
served their status as honestiores. The bar, the higher branches of
the civil service and commissioned rank in the army combined
all these advantages, and so did holy orders as the endowments
of the church increased. Even service in the provincial ojficia
or in the ranks of the army involved no loss of legal status.
Cohortales and common soldiers were honestiores and enjoyed the
same legal privileges as decurions, and were moreover protected
by praescriptio fori. It was only the humblest curiales who were
prepared to forfeit their privileged status and sink to mere plebeti',
dependent for protection on the patronage of the great magnate
whose lands they managed.
Only one case is known of curiales desiring to divest themselves
752
THE CITIES
of their rank and become simple landowners. The sons of a
certain Agenantia, in the province of Lucania, made this request
on the ground of ill health, and the terms in which Cassiodorus
acceded to it are significant: 'Let them then be placed rather .on
the list of landowners, to suffer none the less the troubles which
they themselves used to inflict on others. For they will be molested
for the regular taxes, they will tremble at the appearance of the
collector . . . they will begin to dread the demand notices for
which formerly they were feared.'
92
That the imperial government was in the long run only very
partially successful in maintaining the curial class is evident. The
constant reiteration of the laws shows that they were only spas-
modically enforced and constantly evaded, and from time to time
the government admitted the fact by condoning wholesale past
breaches of the regulations. The emperors constantly lament the
diminishing wealth and numbers of the councils, and by 5 36
Justinian could say: 'If one counts the city councils of our empire
one will find them very small, some well off neither in numbers
nor in wealth, some perhaps with a few members, but none with
any wealth.'
93
Even at this date the statement was probably somewhat exag-
gerated. In the middle of the fifth century we happen to hear of
Valerian of Emesa, who was evidently a very wealthy man to be
able to buy an illustrious office in defiance of a law issued less
than five years earlier, to maintain the private army of barbarian
slaves with which he carried out his escapade, and to secure virtual
pardon for his outrageous conduct. Leo expressly exempted from
their curial origin Dorotheus, a senator of illustrious rank, and
Irenaeus, a tribune and notary of spectabi!is grade, though the
latter had been born before his father had held illustrious office;
both were claimed by the council of Antioch because their mothers
were daughters of Antiochene curia/os, and Antioch possessed the
peculiar privilege that curial obligations passed through the
female as well as the male line. Leo again exempted Doctitius, a
young c!arissimus, whose father had held illustrious office. Zeno
would not have ruled that curia/os who held the illustrious offices of
magister ojjiciorum, quaestor, comes !argitionum, comes rei privatae or
comes domesticorum should no longer secure exemption for them-
selves or for their sons, and moreover have made the law retro-
spective to the beginning of his reign, unless a substantial number
of decurions had been profiting from this exemption. Nor would
Anastasius have regarded as inequitable the clause of this law
which made it retrospective, unless a certain number of persons had
been adversely affected. Some of these men may have risen by
THE CUR/AlES 753
ability from humble curial families, but it is more likely that the
majority were men of considerable fortunes. It is even more
significant that Justinian in 53 8 had to re-enact that while honorary
codicils of the praetorian or urban prefecture or the mastership of
the soldiers made curia!es members of the senate they did not free
them from their curial status: it is evident that decurions were
still obtaining these illustrious titles, which were certainly not
given to poor men.94
From Justinian's day we also have a story retailed by Procopius
in the Secret History. Anatolius, a leading decurion of Ascalon,
had an only daughter. She was evidently a considerable heiress,
as she married one Mamilianus, from one of the best (evidently
senatorial) families in Caesarea; but when her father died Mamilia-
nus was disappointed, for by the law of 5 36 she had to surrender
not one quarter but three quarters of her fortune to the council of
Ascalon. When she was eventually left a childless widow and an
old woman, Justinian confiscated her fortune, allowing her an
annuity of 3 6 5 solidi. If this was, as Procopius regards it, an
insulting pittance, enough to save her from begging in the streets,
her fortune must have been very considerable, but we unfortunately
do not know how much of it came from her late husband, and
how much was the surviving quarter of Anatolius's curial estate.95
Broadly speaking, however, Justinian's analysis seems to have
been correct. It was the rich curial families which were most
successful in escaping their obligations, as was only natural, since
they had the influence and the connections and the money whether
to evade the laws or to exploit the legal opportunities for
promotion. This is what the emphasis of the imperial legislation
suggests, and what Libanius confirms. His complaints are all of
men who have obtained seats on the senate, or posts in the most
select services, such as the agentes in rebus, or commissions in the
army, and the individual cases which he cites are of decurions who
have become provincial governors and even proconsuls of Asia.
He inveighs bitterly against parents who send their sons to Berytus
and even to Rome to study Latin and law. They did not incur this
heavy expense, he remarks, merely to improve their sons' general
culture; Latin and law were of little use to an Antiochene decurion,
but indispensable for an ambitious barrister who aspired to a
governorship.
9
6
By the sixth century the order can have contained very few
wealthy men. The humble classes of decurions did their best to
emulate their rich colleagues, but the avenues of escape open to
them offered less security. Many, despite the periodic roundups,
must have made good their escape into the civil service, the army
754
THE CITIES
and the church, but there still remained, as Justinian admits, a
fair number of decurions of modest means in some at any rate of
the city councils in his day.
The reasons for the government's very moderate success in
maintaining the curial order are well analysed by Libanius in two
speeches or pamphlets, one addressed to the council of Antioch,
the other to Theodosius I, and his analysis is borne out by casual
allusions in the Codes. There was in effect a tacit conspiracy among
all the parties concerned to evade the laws. The great magnates
liked to oblige their curial friends and clients, either gratis or
more usually for a substantial consideration. Bishops would
consecrate or ordain decurions, whether because they thought them
the best candidates, or to oblige a friend, or, like Antoninus, metro-
politan of Ephesus, for cash down. The clerks in the sacra scrinia
were only too willing to turn a dishonest penny by making out
the requisite codicils for prospective senators, or probatoriae for
would-be civil servants.97
What is more surprising, the councils were very slack in
preventing their members from leaving them, and inactive in
reclaiming them when gone, so much so that the government had
to threaten them with fines if they failed to assert their rights.
Libanius cites two recent cases from Antioch itself to prove his
point. One decurion had left the town when actually nominated
to celebrate games. The council were loud in indignation and
vented their wrath on his unfortunate surety, who had to bear his
burden. The culprit meanwhile had sold his ancestral estates and
with the proceeds bought a high office. Out of its profits he later
bought back his estates and added to them, and when he returned a
great man, not a word was said to the emperor or the praetorian
prefect. Another decurion had slipped away by sea from Seleucia,
fearing that he might be recalled if he took the slow land journey.
He had become proconsul of Asia, and when he returned a senator,
was welcomed effusively: no legal proceedings were taken against
him either.
According to Libanius the councils alleged two excuses for their
inaction. It was wasted labour to institute proceedings against
influential truants, as they would inevitably make good their
escape sooner or later. And secondly it was dangerous to do so,
and thus incur the enmity of the parties themselves and of their
patrons. Libanius admits that there was some truth in both pleas,
but asserts that the real motives of the surviving councillors were
less reputable. There was, he declares, outright corruption:
'the decurions of Apamea have granted-the word is more polite
than sold-many such favours'. But more potent than cash was
THE CURIALES
755
the hope of reciprocal help. If the council, or rather the leading
councillors who controlled it, connived at the promotion of a
colleague, that colleague, now become a senator or high official,
might be expected to lend them a helping hand when they tried
to follow in his footsteps. And even if they stayed on the council,
the last thing that they desired was the return of wealthier col-
leagues. As a result of the migration of these colleagues to a higher
sphere, they were now the leading members of the council, able
to share out the perquisites among themselves and to oppress their
humble colleagues. They could always pitch a piteous tale to the
provincial governor and get him to authorise the reduction of
civic expenditure, in view of their low numbers and modest
means, and they could then arrange that the expenditure did not
fall on themselves. 98
The curia!es have come in for a great deal of commiseration. That
they regarded their lot as hard is fairly certain; at any rate we never
hear of a contented decurion. Their ancestors had regarded it as a
distinction to serve on the council and a matter of pride to spend
lavishly on their cities' games and public buildings, and had taken in
their stride the less attractive duties which the imperial govern-
ment had laid upon them. The spirit of civic patriotism was not,
it is true, utterly dead. From Libanius' speeches and letters it can
be seen that among the decurions of Antioch there were a few who
still in the late fourth century took a pride in giving magnificent
games. But even the most generous shunned the status of a
curialis. A law of 4I 3 reveals that in Illyricum there were persons
exempt from the curia who were willing to hold expensive magis-
tracies if they did not thereby forfeit their exempt status and become
with their descendants curia!es. The emperor, to encourage such
public spirit, enacted that, for the prefecture of Illyricum only, the
rule whereby anyone who held a magistracy automatically became
a decurion should be relaxed. In 465 Leo extended this principle to
the whole empire, and added that If such volunteers undertook all
the regular offices they might be rewarded, if they so desired, with
the post of pater civitatis (that is curator civitatis), without prejudice
to the exemption of their descendants. A law of Justinian en-
visages exempt persons voluntarily becoming decurions, and
provides that their property and descendants should not thereby
become liable to curial charges after their decease.
99
These were, however, obviously exceptional cases. Most
people felt no pride in being members of the city council when
everyone with the requisite minimum of property was being
forced to join, and when all persons of consequence were acquiring
equestrian and later senatorial rank. The expenditure which had
756 THE CITIES
been either gladly undertaken or at least accepted as a matter of
nobl:sse ob(zge came to be regarded as an imposition. The demands of
the 1mpenal government loomed larger, as levies and taxes increased
and became more and more difficult to collect. As time went on
and wealthy decurions rose to the higher ranks of society,
were not only more hardly pressed but sank yet further
m. est:em, so that even their legal privileges were overridden
w1th 1mpumty.
This much is true, but it may be doubted whether the financial
which fell on the curiales were as overwhelming as they
complamed. These fell into two classes, the civic charges proper,
such as the games, and the underwriting of the imperial taxes. The
former have been already described: it may suffice here to say that
we know of only one decurion who was ruined by them one
J ulian of Antioch, who 'was one of those who undertook the heavy
charge of providing chariots for the races and sold the one estate
he had and brought his father, an old man who had reached his
hundredth year, to unending grief'. On the latter it is difficult to
generalise. In special circumstances the taxes might be so heavy that
the curial collectors could not extract the full sum and had to make
it up from their own capital resources. Libanius laments that the
long Persian war under Constantius II 'ruined the councils
bringing them year by year to a worse state, as the
were to the Tigris and owing to their losses there had
to sell thelt ancestral estates'. Theodoret, protesting against the
,of his native city of Cyrrhus, appeals to the prae-
tor:an prefect to the wretched taxpayers, and spare the
thnce wretched decunons who are being dunned for what they
cannot collect'. Libanius again paints an imaginary picture of the
curial tax collector yrhom a village under the patronage of the
dux defies, and who 1s consequently sold up and struck off the list
of the counciL But except in such abnormal circumstances-the
pressure of .special warti.me levies,. the grossly exaggerated assess-
ment of a city, or organised rebelliOn of the peasant taxpayers-it
may . be whether the curiales had often to make up
deficits from the1r property. The government was slow to exercise
its powers of distraint. Arrears were allowed to drag on for many
years, and at fairly regular intervals were written off by a general
remission. lOO
There is also another side to the picture. If the decurions were
the helpless victims of the imperial bureaucracy, they in their turn
were often as ruthless and extortionate to the commoner citizens
under their sway. Salvian's famous dictum 'what cities are there
and not only cities but even towns and in which
THE DECLINE OF THE COUNCILS
757
curiales are not so many tyrants?' is borne out not only by the
illustrations which. he gives but by other independent evidence.
Constantine ordered that the assessment of extraordinary levies
should not be left to the principales of the council but worked out
in detail by the governor so that the burden should fall first on the
rich and then on the medium and small landowners. Theodosius
enacted that exactores should be elected by the councils annually
or at least biennially, and not by continuous office have 'uninter-
rupted power to harass the provincials with the tyranny of their
extortions'. Cassiodorus, in an edict guaranteeing the curiales
protection against the imperial bureaucracy, warns them in their
turn to refrain from oppressing their inferiors, and in his letter
authorising the resignation of the sons of Agenantia from the curia,
comments that they will now be the victims of the troubles they
used to inflict. Justinian, as we have seen, held that decurions,
'being bred in harsh extortions', were as a class unfit for holy
orders and 'preaching about loving kindness and contempt for
wealth'.
101
The evidence so far cited, though suggestive, is far from con-
clusive. But the whole history of the curial order proves that its
members cannot have been so heavily burdened as to force them to
draw substantially on their capital. The order was from the middle
of the fourth century virtually a closed class, which received few
new recruits, but suffered a continuous drain, mainly of its richest
members. The decurions who remained on the council had little
opportunity of making money-except by extortion and peculation
in the course of their curial duties; they were landowners who lived
on their rents. They were certainly a much poorer class in the sixth
century than they had been in the third, but they still subsisted in
sufficient numbers and commanded enough wealth to carry out
their functions. This can only mean that even the dwindling
remnant of poorer decurions who remained on the register did not
have to eat into their capital to meet their obligations.
As the councils lost their richest and most enterprising members,
as their revenues were curtailed, and as civic patriotism decayed, the
cities lost initiative and vitality. Whether through genuine poverty
or through lack of public spirit the councils became increasingly
reluctant to undertake any action which would involve expense.
This encouraged growing interference in civic affairs by the pro-
vincial governors. Such interference was most marked in the
capitals of provinces, where the governor normally resided and
THE CITIES
where he was particularly anxious to make himself popular-not
always, Libanius regrets, with the council, but with the commons,
whose acclamations in ilie theatre might be reported to ilie em-
peror. But it also applied to the lesser cities, often to their dis-
advantage, as when a governor transferred to the capital games
prepared at the expense of another city, or utilised for its decoration
columns and marbles taken from a small town.
102
Interference was common in most spheres of civic life. In
famines at Antiocl! it was generally the governor who took action.
Provincial governors are warned in a constitution of 409 not to
ruin the curiales by insisting on extravagant expenditure on games.
But it was in public works that the interference of governors was
most marked. In the title of ilie Theodosian Code de operis publicis
it is almost always assumed iliat the provincial governor is res-
ponsible, and ilie building inscriptions tell the same tale-it is no
longer ilie council and people who erect and repair buildings
but the governor, and ilie curator of the city appears only as his
agent. Since governors wished to leave some tangible memorial
of themselves, iliey were too apt to start new buildings instead of
repairing old, and the imperial government had to issue a
constant stream of constitutions ordering repairs to take priority
over new works. Since the governor had to use the civic revenues
for his works, supplemented if need be by special levies-he was
strictly forbidden to touch imperial revenue-he acquired an
overriding control over civic finance, and, it would appear,
frequently used it to his profit.103
This decay in local autonomy was encouraged by the fact that
the official representatives of the city, the councillors, were no
longer the richest and most influential persons in the city, who had
mostly acquired some higher rank which absolved them from the
curia, but men of modest means who could not stand up to the
governor. The imperial government evidently viewed iliese
developments with some apprehension as exposing the cities to
unrestrained oppression and extortion, and took measures to
check them. In the Western empire as early as 409 the election of
the defensor civitatis, who was supposed to be the protector of the
citizens against official oppression, was transferred from the
curia to a new assembly consisting of the bishop and clergy, the
principal landowners and the decurions. In ilie Eastern empire,
where probably the cities retained more vitality, this step was not
taken till nearly a century later, by Anastasius in 505. Anastasius
also gave to the bishop and clergy and principal landowners
( decurions are not mentioned as such) the duty of electing a corn-
buyer in time of need. It was probably he also who transferred to

THE DECLINE OF THE COUNCILS 759
the same body the election of the curator, or, as he was now called,
pater civitatis.
104
.
These steps were evidently m tended to strengthen the.
of the important civic magistrates and secure that more mfluentlal
men were appointed, instead of nominees of the governor, as had
been too often the case. According to Justinian iliey were a failure,
and men of no weight continued to be elected as defensores. His
solution was to compel all residents of substance, however high
their rank to hold the office in rotation, on the nomination as
hitherto of the bishop, clergy and .. It is not
known how far this reform was successful, but by tllis time local
autonomy was at a very low ebb. Justinian had regularly to
admonish his governors against deputies (loci.servatores,
-.:ono-.:7Je7J-.:ai) to govern the several cities. The practice 1s
by an official building inscription of 53 3 at Gerasa of Arab1a,
dated by the dux et praeses and his deputy, who is an agens in
rebus.
105
Particular efforts were made to free civic finance from the control
of the provincial governor. Zeno iliat the civ!c. revenues
should be intact to cmtatts, be.admirustered by
him. Anastasms by ilie mstltutwn of vtndtces 1mposed central
control over the collection of the imperial revenue in each city, and
these powerful officers appear to '?ver the
of the civic revenue as well; Justilllan m Edict XIII crtes a docu-
ment drawn up in reign of and .the prefecture of
Marinus by Potamo, vmdex of Alexandna, the revenue of
that city derived from an export tax to various needs such as
the baths. Justinian in the mandates to provmc1al
issued early in his reign, instt;ucts t.hem to keep the '?f
the cities in repair and maintain ilieir corn supply, usmg the CIV1C
revenues for these purposes. He later (in 545) reversed this
returning to Zeno's rule, but how successfully he enforced 1t 1s
unknown. Anoilier abuse which he endeavoured to cl!eck was the
practice of the praetorian prefecture _of sending special
missioners to the provinces to audit ilie expenditure of ciyic
revenues on public works. This was merely an for peculation
and extortion, and Justinian empowered the clt!es to refuse ad-
mission to such auditors until their commissions had been verified
and confirmed by himself.
106
. . . .
What had happened in the meanwhile to the c1ty councils 1s not
very clear. John Lydus, who was born in 490, writing in the 5 5os
remarks apropos of the wearing of toga: 'I myself rememb.er
that this custom prevailed. in ,the t_o_o, the councils
used to administer the cities. Evagrms, wntmg m ilie 5 9os, after
THE CITIES
describing the institution of the vindices by Anastasius, states:
'As a result the revenues were to a great extent ruined, and the
prosperity of the cities was destroyed. For in old days the nobles
were enrolled on the registers of the cities, each city having the
members of the council like a kind of senate.' These passages
imply that in the East the city councils ceased to exist after Anas-
tasius' reign. The curial order on the other hand certainly continued
to exist, as Justinian's meticulous legislation about it proves,
and decurions still did their share in collecting the imperial
revenues. It may be taken as certain that a roll of decurions was
still maintained, and that they were still called upon to perform their
liturgies for the state, and no doubt for their own cities also. But
the direction of affairs had passed to officers elected by the bishop,
clergy and greater landowners, or nominated by the provincial
governor or the central government; and in these circumstances
the council doubtless met only for formal sessions.l0
7
How insignificant the councillors had become by the middle
of the sixth century is strikingly evidenced by the minutes of the
Council of Mopsuestia, held in 5 50. The object was to discover
if the name of Theodore of Mopsuestia had ever been entered on
the diptychs, and for this purpose the keeper of the church
archives and sixteen of the oldest clergy, and the pater civitatis
and sixteen of the oldest prominent laymen were summoned to
testify. The pater civitatis was an agens in rebus, not even a citizen of
the town. Of the sixteen notables four do not give their status, and
of the remaining twelve two are comites, one a pa!atinus, one an
agens in rebus, three praefectiani, two tabu!arii, one an architect and
one a manufacturer of beds. Only one member of the council
appears, a principa!is. Even in this obscure Cilician town the local
notables mostly held posts (no doubt sinecures) in the imperial
civil service.
108
The ultimate fate of the city councils in the West is as obscure.
Juridically their position was better since Anastasius' legislation
did not apply in the West until Justinian's reconquest of Africa and
Italy, and then only in those areas. The councils should therefore
continued t? elect the curator civitatis and the other magistrates,
w1th the excepuon of the defensor. In the barbarian kingdoms
their powers were reduced by the authority of the comes civitatis
originally a military governor appointed by the king, who steadily
encroached on their functions. Nor were things very different after
the reconquest in Italy, where, owing to the constant menace of
the Lombards, the local garrison commander, the tribunus or comes
civitatis, became de facto the governor of the city.tos
In the West as in the East decurions remained important to the
THE DECLINE OF THE COUNCILS 761
g<;>vernment as tax collectors. Cassiodorus' Variae prove that they
still fulfilled t_his function in the Ostrogothic kingdom, and at the
of the snct_h century the warned Januarius,
b1shop of Carahs, not to ordarn anyone hable to the curia, 'in case
he should be compelled after ordination to return to the collection
of the public taxes'. There is no evidence for Vandal Africa or
Merovingian Ga-:1, in the kingdom the preservation of
the laws on decunons m the Brev1armm of Alaric drawn up in 5 o6
and the full interpretations appended to these show that
curial order still played a vital role in the administration.no
moreover from.the what is lacking in the East,
posltlve ev1dence that the clty councJls continued to hold sessions
to the first quarter of the seventh century. One of the minor
funcuons of the curia was to prove wills, register transfers of real
P.roperty, the o_f guardians, and perform
s1tn1lar quasl-judlclal funct10ns. The he1r appeared before the curia
produced the will and the witnesses, the wirnesses were asked
verify their seals and signatures; and the will was then publicly
opened and read. In th: case of conveyances of land the purchaser
produced the deeds, were read; the curia sent representatives
to the vendor to venfy that he acknowledged the transaction it
then sent representatives to witness the formal traditio of the l;nd
on the spot; and finally it ordered the necessary alterations in the
po_lyptychs, the reg1sters. All these were fully
mmuted, and a cerufied copy of the m1nutes 1ssued to the interested
parties.
A considerable number of these certified copies have been
preserved in Italian ecclesiastical archives. They range in date
from 489 to 62 5. Most record proceedings before the curia of
Ravenna, but there are two which b.elong to Reate and Syracuse.
They name the two n:agzstratus or quznquenna!es who presided and a
group of prznctpa!es who attended. These proceedings are,
1t 1s true, purely formal, but they attest not only that the curiae still
held regular sessions in the early seventh century, but that there
were still annually elected duoviri, as there had been for seven
hundred years or more-a striking testimony to Roman conser-
vatism in matters of form. These ceremonies long continued to be
in .the kingdo;ns also. Not only are curial
proceedings mcluded ln the collections of notarial formulae of the
sixt?, seventh and eighth wl:ich survive from Visigothic
Spam and a number of Gallic cltles. B1shop Bertram of Cenomani
who made his will in 6 I 5, directed that when it should be opened
his executor 'ipso prosequente gestis municipalibus secundum
legem faciat allegari, quo semper firmiter perduret' .m
762 THE CITIES
The constitutional decline of the cities as autonomous com-
munities does not necessarily imply that they decayed as centres of
population. In the West there is evidence that they began to decay
as early as the last quarter of the fourth century. In 395 Honorius,
observing that powerful _persons, that_ is landlords,
giving asylum to both curzales and collegzatz, directed the praetonan
prefect of Italy to secure their return to their cities and to fine
recalcitrant landlords 5 lb. gold for every curialis and I lb. gol_d
every collegiatus he failed to surrender. 397 he
governors in Italy to recover for theu towns collegzaft who had
absconded, together with their offspring. In 4oo, writing to the
praetoriaD; prefect of the Gauls, he declare?: cities deprived of
their services have lost the splendour w1th which they once had
shone, seeing that large numbers of collegiati have abandoned
urban civilisation and taken to a rustic life'. He ordered that they
be hunted down and recalled, and their children (if born within the
last forty years) divided between their cities and the landlords of
the peasant women whom they had married. A number of con-
temporary laws also order (for the first tiJ?<;) that_ collegiati, as well
as curiales, should be combed out of the c1vil serv1ce and the army
and restored to their towns: V alentinian III further forbade the
ordination of collegiati in 452. Majorian in 458 ordered a regular
round-up of both curiales and collegiati, with their offspring, from
the estates of the great landlords. Several of these laws were
incorporated in the Visigothic Breviarium and Theoderic included
a rule to the same effect in his Edict.
112
This massive emigration of urban craftsmen into the countryside,
where they settled down as tenant farmers and married peasant
women, is an unusual phenomenon. It implies that many craftsmen
could no longer make a living in the towns. The reason is probably
to be found in the disappearance of the urban gentry on whose
custom they had hitherto mainly depended. Italy and Gaul,
where the decay of the towns is best attested, were also the areas
where the great landlords held the largest estates, and these land-
lords had never been addicted to small town life: they lived partly
in Rome or one of the big cities, partly in their rural villas. It was
the medium landlords who had formed the resident aristocracies
of the smaller cities. During the fourth and fifth centuries many
decurions sold, gave or bequeathed their estates to senators;
others, who prospered, became senators themselves and, being no
longer obliged to live in town, retired to their country villas.
With only the bishop and his clergy and the few surviving decurions
to serve, the craftsmen and shopkeepers naturally found their
business declining, and had to seek their livelihood in the country.
PROVINCIAL ASSEMB,LIES
It is noteworthy that no similar laws were issued by the emperors
of the East, and that Justinian did not include any of these Western
laws in his Code. It would seem that in the Eastern parts no
migration of urban craftsmen to the country took place. The cities
apparently continued to prosper economically, and the guilds
maintained their membership without any need for governmental
action. The archeological evidence supports this conclusion and
even suggests a revival of the towns in the fifth and sixth centuries.
To take one instance, Gerasa, a largish city of Arabia, which had
flourished greatly in the second century A.D. evidently fell on evil
days in the third and shows little or no sign of revival in the fourth
or early fifth. But from the latter part of the fifth century a dozen
churches, many of them of some architectural pretensions, were
erected and several public buildings repaired or re-erected: this
activity went on uninterrupted down to the Arab conquest, the
last church being dedicated under Phocas.na
The reason is again probably to be found in the social structure
and habits of the aristocracy. Landed property was probably more
evenly distributed in the East, and there was a large number of
medium landlords. The habit of urban life was moreover more
deeply rooted in the East. Country villas are not much in evidence,
and even the greater landlords preferred to live in towns. Thus
even though the curiales shrank in numbers and declined in average
wealth, the cities continued to be the homes of the local landowners
who provided a market for the urban craftsmen and shopkeepers.
Cities could communicate directly with the central government
by sending a delegation to the comitatus, and we know of many
cases when they did so. In 4 I 6 it would appear that the emperor
had been pestered by delegations from Alexandria, for he ordered
that the council must submit its petitions first to the Augustal
prefect, who would decide whether they merited the dispatch of
delegates to Constantinople. More generally, however, the cities
voiced their grievances and made their requests through their
provincial assembly, the concilium provinciae. These assemblies,
some of which were very old, dating back to the Republic and even
to before Roman rule, had become general throughout the empire
under the Principate. They consisted of delegates from the cities
of the province, and their main ostensible business was to conduct
the official provincial cult of Rome and Augustus, electing a high
priest of the province (sacerdos provinciae), who in the East usually
bore a title of the form Asiarch or Syriarch, and celebrating games
R
764 THE CITIES
in honour of the emperor. The assembly naturally also debated
questions of common interest, and came fairly regularly to pass
votes of thanks to satisfactory governors and . to promote. the
P
rosecution at Rome of those accused of oppress10n or extort10n:
114
they also sent delegations to the . to petitions. .
The assemblies continued under Dioeletian, bemg adapted to his
new provincial organisation, and despite associatior: with the
pagan worship of the emperor they survived The
worship of the emperor had never possessed much rehg:10us co?--
tent being in essence an expression of loyalty to the empire and 1ts
and even under Diocletian some Christians had apparently
felt do scruples in serving as provincial high priests: the of
llliberis dealt very .mildly with such offenders. Constantme thus
found little difficulty in allowing the institution to survive after
eliminating the pagan acts of worship involved. We possess a
letter which he wrote to the cities of Umbria, who had asked for
leave to secede from the conci!ium of the province of Tuscia et
Umbria, which held its meeting at Volsinii in and to form
a separate conci!ium meeting at Hispellum. Constantme acceded to
their request not only to elect their own sacerdos, who was t? give
theatrical games and a gladiatorial show, but also to bmld at
Hispellum a temp!um F!aviae gentis, 'provided that temple
dedicated to our name shall not be polluted by the deceptions of any
contagious superstition'.115
One of the main functions of the conci!ium continued throughout
the later empire to be the election of the provincial sacerdos (or
Asiarch Phoenicarch, Syriarch or what not), who gave games of
magnificence at the metropolis of the pro
games were expressly exduded from the law of 409 !tmitlng
expenditure on civic games. It appears that in some provmces, at
any rate, the sacerdos received a customary subvention from
imperial government, that in others there were m
land, and in some again a general levy was made on the _provmce
to assist in the expenses; it is not known what classes patd except
that senators were excused from contributions to the Syriarchy in
393 Despite these aids the high
a very heavy burden and there was difficulty at times m 1t.
Hymetius, governor of Africa in 366-7, was praised by the province
'because he revived enthusiasm for the high priesthood of the
province so that what was formerly an object of terror is now the
subject of competition'.ns
The office was in principle voluntary, but governors had to be
warned from time to time not to exercise compulsion. It had its
compensations, however. Its holders bore for life the honourable
PROVINCIAL ASSEMBLIES
title of sacerdota!es, were exempt from curial duties, and in some
provinces at any rate received an imperial rank, in Africa (in 3 7I)
that of ex comitibus, in Asia (in 3 8 5) that of senators. The high
priests were normally drawn from the decurions of the province:
Constantius' ruling in 3 58 that they were to be chosen in Africa
exclusively from advocates (who were, as he points out, mostly
liable to curial duties) seems to be exceptional. They commonly
came from the metropolis, where the games were held and where
decurions were normally the richest: to ease the burden Valens in
37 5 ruled that in Asia the games should be held in rotation in the
four cities which had the title of metropolis. He also welcomed
candidatures from minor cities, stipulating only that the sacerdos
must not be transferred permanently from his own curia to that of
the metropolis. Other laws forbid the migration of sacerdota!es
to the provincial capital, and it would seem that ambitious curia!es
of minor towns often tried to improve their social status in this way.
Ultimately the provincial high priesthood seems to have become too
heavy a burden for the impoverished curia!es. Leo ordered that at
Antioch the consular of the province should henceforth celebrate
the Syriarchic games, using the revenues assigned for the purpose
(presumably the customary imperial subvention, endowments and
levy on landowners already mentioned), and that curia!es might not
even volunteer for the post.
117
The provincial assemblies regularly discussed matters of public
interest, passed resolutions on them, and sent delegations to the
emperor to present these resolutions and plead their cause. For
these purposes larger gatherings, covering an entire diocese, were
also occasionally held, and in some areas these diocesan assemblies
became a standing institution. The grievances thus ventilated might
include misconduct by imperial officials or the excessive burden of
taxation; we know of several cases where large remissions were
made on the instance of a provincial or diocesan delegation. The
assemblies were, however, too often prone to petition the emperor
frivolously on points of minor importance, and the emperors were
torn between their desire to give the provincials full and unfettered
liberty to report genuine grievances and their irritation at having
their time wasted by frivolous petitions. The question of expense
was also serious, for the cursus publicus was usually put at the dis-
posal of delegations. The rules on delegations varied. Sometimes
provincial governors were warned that they must place no obstacles
to free debate and to the despatch of envoys. At others they were
instructed to examine the resolutions of the assembly, and to
authorise a delegation only if the matters in question were impor-
tant. Delegations were always referred in the first instance to the
THE CITIES
praetorian prefect. He was sometimes authorised to settle minor
matters himself and refer to tire emperor only those issues on which
he felt incompetent to decide. At otlrer times the prefect was
instructed to investigate tire issues and to brief the emperor, but to
leave the final decision to him in all cases.ns
Attendance at tire assemblies was obligatory. Their com-
position had changed somewhat since the Principate. The honorati
of the province, that is senators, comites and other members of the
imperial aristocracy, were expected to attend, except for those of
the highest rank, praefectorii. These might send attorneys or
the assembly :vas _ordered to consult tlrem individually
m thett homes. In a constitution dated 418, in which he approved
the creatic:n by Agricola, praetorian prefect of the Gauls, of a
regular d10cesan assembly of the Seven Provinces at Aries
Honorius specified that tire governors of the provinces,
honorati and the possessqres must at!end, and imposed a fine of 3 lb.
gold on honoratt or curtales who failed to present themselves. It is
difficult to believe that every curialis in the Seven Provinces had to
make the journey to Aries every year, and stay there a month (the
meet.ing lasted fro;n the Ides of August to those of September),
and lt may be conjectured drat only selected curiales or possessores
were sent by their cities.ns
By the sixth century the provincial assembly had come to include
the bishops, and the curiales, as such, had dropped out. After the
recon.quest of I!aly Justinian gave to provincial assemblies, thus
constituted of bishops and posses sores or principal landowners, the
remarkable privilege of nominating for imperial appointment the
governor of the province. This measure was extended to the whole
empire by J ustin II. It was, he explains, designed to cut at the root
of evil of the times, the purchase of governorships
at high pnces and the extortion to which this gave rise, and the
emperor expresses the hope that henceforth the revenues will be
promptly and fully paid. After these pious professions he an-
nounces that having gh:en. the provincials power of choosing
honest governors, he will m future entertain no complaints from
of oppression or extortion. This belated experiment in
hr:ute? self-gover?-me?-t did not last long. Only live years later
T1berms m a law once again abolishing the purchase
of governorshlps, makes no mention of any election by the
provincial council.12o

CHAPTER XX
THE LAND
N
O changes in !lgricultural. methods are recorded under the
Roman emp1re. Pallad1us, who wrote an ao-ricultural
manual in the fourth century, lays down the rules as
had in the. first. The peasants followed their traditional
routme from generation to generation. The main arable crop was
wheat, but barley was also grown, more for animal feed than for
human consu;nption: in Eg_Ypt and northern Gaul and Illyricum it
was brewed mto beer, wh1ch was the staple drink of the lower
classes in regions. Bear:s were also a common crop, and flax
was especially i_n the Eastern provinces, for the
linen. W,e know httle of the technique of arable
farmmg In the Mediterranean lands, to which the agricultural
mamly refer and. from most of c;mr documentary
evidence comes. Here, owmg to the madequate ramfall a laborious
technique of dry-farming had to be followed. The land was
cropped in alternate years, and frequent ploughing and hoeing
was required. to break up tire soil and keep down weeds and thus
conserve. moisture. Egypt was an exception: here the inundated
land, which was watered and refertilised by tire annual flood of the
Nile, was cropped every year.l
. The average yield was low by modern standards. In Egypt
1t was apparently customary to sow one artaba (3! modii) to the
arura (! acre), and from tire scanty evidence it would seem that a
tenfold return was normal on good land. This evidence squares
with that provided by leases. If land was let on a share of the crop,
the tenant and the landlord almost always went fifty-fifty in leases
of arable land. If tire rent was paid in kind, it was usually five
artabae to the. arura or thereabouts. Outside Egypt it was usual to
sow more thickly. In recommends 4 modii to the
tugerum (!acre) _on he.avler soils, and 5 on lighter; Palladius prefers
5 to 6 .. On earher ev1dence 6 '!'odii to the iugerum (nearly twice the
Egyptian norr::') was the rule m Sicily and in Cyrenaica. We have
no data for y1elds save for much earlier periods. According to
767
THE LAND
Cicero an eightfold yield was normal in Sicily, a tenfold exceptional.
Columella in a pessimistic passage declares that he can scarcely
remember when in the greater part of Italy corn yielded fourfold.
On Cicero's figures the return in Sicily per acre sown would have
been 75 per cent. higher than in Egypt, but in Sicily the land was
cropped only every other year. If Columella's statement is to be
taken seriously Italian land yielded in alternate years only about
two-thirds of what Egyptian land produced every year.
2
Vines and olives were extensively grown wherever the climate
permitted. Wine was the staple drink of all classes in the Mediter-
ranean lands (except Egypt), and was everywhere drunk by the well-
to-do. Olive oil was universally used in cooking, and for lighting
and for soap. Vines were cultivated not only in the Mediterranean
lands but in northern Gaul as far as the valleys of the Seine and the
Moselle. Olives were confined to the Mediterranean basin, but
were increasingly planted in desert areas, such as eastern Syria,
which had hitherto been unproductive. Viticulture was far more
profitable than arable farming. In the assessment of land for taxa-
tion in Syria 5 iugera of vineyard were equated with 20 iugera of the
best arable. In Egyptian leases the tenant of a vineyard paid two-
thirds or even three-quarters of the produce to the landlord.
Olives were even more profitable: a little over one iugerum planted
with mature olive trees was in Syria assessed as equivalent to 5
iugera of vineyard or 20 iugera of best arable. Various fruit and nut
trees-date palms, figs, apples, almonds and pistachios-were also
grown and apparently yielded a high profit.
3
Cattle, sheep, goats and pigs were raised throughout the empire.
The cattle were mainly draught animals, for oxen were universally
used for ploughing and hauling wagons, but also provided meat
and milk, while their hides were valuable for leather. Sheep were
mainly raised for their wool, goats mainly for their meat and milk.
The animal which provided the greatest part of the meat supply was,
however, the pig; pork and, in the winter, ham or bacon was the
normal ration of the troops, pork alone was issued to the Roman
people. Horses were also reared for the army, the public post and the
races and for private use, mules and donkeys for riding and as pack
animals. In the Arabian and Mrican deserts camels were bred: they
were commonly used as pack animals in many parts of the empire.
We know very little of the organisation of stock farming. There
were areas which were noted for the animals which they produced.
Spanish, and Cappadocian horses were famous, and the wool of
certain northern Gaul, Apulia, Phrygia and Asturia,
fetched high pnces. Here there was probably large-scale production
on common pastures or on big ranches; we know of a famous
'
THE IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE
imperial stud farm, the Villa Palmati, in Cappadocia, which pro-
duced race-horses of high repute. The estates of the Roman church
in Sicily evidently included extensive ranches. Gregory the Great
found that they were very unprofitable: 'it is very hard', he wrote
to the rector of the Sicilian patrimony, 'that we spend 6o solidi a
year on our herdsmen, and do not get 6o denarii out of the lands'.
He accordingly ordered that all barren cows and useless bulls
should be sold off, and all the mares except 4oo, which were to be
hired to the conductores of the agricultural estates, while the herds-
men were to be given work as cultivators. he::r also of
farming on a smaller scale. In the Saltus Erud1anus m the territory
of Patavium two out of the ten holdings are described as water
meadows (paludes) and were evidently let to dairy farmers, for the
tenants in addition to their money rent pay a perquisite of milk, and
nothing else. But to judge by the perquisites (xenia) commonly
paid by the tenants of arable holdings in Italy and in Egypt, most
small farmers kept pigs, geese and hens. Many small farmers also
seem to have kept a cow and a few sheep and goats. Most moreover
kept bees; honey often figures among the xenia. It was probably
from such small-scale mixed farming that the empire drew much of
its meat, milk and cheese, and most of its eggs, poultry and honey,
all important items in its food supply: in the absence of sugar
honey was greatly in demand.
4
The paramount importance of agriculture in. the ec?nomy of the
empire can scarcely be exaggerated. In taxes 1t prov1ded the vast
bulk of the revenue of the state. The most important of the financial
ministries, tl1e praetorian prefecture, which supplied all the major
needs of the administration, relied entirely on a land tax, which
was exclusively assessed on agricultural land, farm stock and the
rural population. The much _less important of the
sacrae largitiones drew much of Its revenue from lev1es, such as the
vestis, assessed on the same basis, and upon special taxes, such as the
aurum oblaticium and coronarium, paid by the main landowning classes,
senators and decurions. The third financial department, the res
privata, was fed by the rents of imperial lands. The only_ not
levied on agriculture were the customs and tolls (vectzgalta), the
sales tax (siliquaticum) instituted by Valentinian Ill in the West,
the collatio lustralis. The first two bore on all consumers alike:
only the last was assessed directly on trade and industry, it
produced a negligible amount of revenue, and was abohshed
without difficulty by Anastasius.
5
THE LAND
By far the greatest part of the national income of the. Roman
empire was, so far as we can estimate, derived from agnculture.
Rents formed a major part of the endowments of such corporatio_ns
as the cities and the churches, and of the incomes of the rentler
classes the senatorial and curial orders, and they also contributed
to the Incomes of the professional classes. These rents did not all
arise from agricultural land, but the proportion which came from
urban property was very small. There are in the Liber
lists of properties, with their rental value, presented by Constantme
and others to eighteen churches in Rome and Italy. The rents total
more than 37,ooo solidi a year, and were from upwards of r6o
named properties, enough to make a fair sample. Nearly 90 per
cent. of the whole rent roll comes from agricultural land, and little
more than ro per cent. from urban property of all kinds, bouses,
gardens, warehouses, baths and bakeries.
6
The corporate revenues of the cities arose partly from dues and
tolls (vectiga!ia) but mainly from their public lands. The churches
drew part of their income from offerings (oblationes), but became
increasingly dependent on the rents of land given or bequeathed to
them by benefactors: the offerings, too, were mostly derived in the
form of first-fruits from agriculture.
7
The vast incomes of the Roman senatorial familes, we are told by
Olympiodorus, were derived from their estates, and all our other
evidence bears this statement out. Those senators, it is true, who
took an active part in the administration augmented their unearned
incomes with their salaries and with the perquisites of office, and
new men who rose into the order made their fortunes by such
means. But they invested their profits in land, and increased their
estates by grants of land from the crown, and their descendants
became great landlords. Decurions were almost necessarily land-
lords, for a property qualification was required and it was only
exceptionally that other forms of property than land were taken into
consideration. Decurions sometimes increased their income by
professional earnings, especially at the bar, or very occasionally by
trade, but the great majority depended for the bulk of their income
on agricultural rents. s
Many members of the professional classes were also landlords.
Many of the privileges granted to higher civil servants, such as
immunity from extraordinaria and sordida munera, presuppose that
they owned land. Lower civil servants must also have often
possessed substantial landed property. This is implied by the im-
munity from curial service accorded to the retired cohorta!es of
Syria by Diocletian and confirmed by V alens, and by the special rule
that in Osrhoene one son of each successive princeps of the provin-
' THE IMPORTANCE OF A(lRICULTURE 771
cial oificium was enrolled in the curia of Edessa. In the army too
both officers and men are often recorded or implied to have had
landed property. That barristers commonly owned land is implied
by the privilege which patroni ftsci obtained to continue to plead for
their co!oni after they had retired from practice. We know of
professors and doctors who were landlords: Libanius complains
of the defiant attitude of some of his tenants, and Flavius Phoebam-
mon, the public doctor of Antinoopolis, had inherited estates
situated in two city territories from his father, who had also been a
doctor. The immunity from curial service and from sordida munera
accorded to all professors and doctors implies that these cases were
typical.
9
As early as the reign of Constantius II many of the clergy must
have been landowners, for at the council of Ariminum they peti-
tioned the emperor for immunity from land tax. He firmly
rejected their plea: 'with regard to clerics who own estates', he
wrote to the praetorian prefect, 'your sublime authority will not
only prevent their excusing the acreage of other persons, but will
cause them to be compelled to pay taxes for the estate which they
themselves hold'. We know of several bishops who owned
considerable estates, from Pope Damasus, who endowed the church
which he built at Rome with two estates bringing in 120! and 103
solidi a year, to Remigius, bishop of Rheims, whose detailed will
we possess. We know too of lower clergy who owned smaller
estates. Augustine, replying to critics who declared that some of
his clergy had not sold all their goods and adopted a monastic life,
according to the rule which he himself had instituted at Hippo,
gives some interesting details. V alerius, a deacon, still held some
'little fields' (age!!i) in common with his brother, a subdeacon at
Milevis. Patricius, a subdeacon, held some 'tiny fields' (age!!uli) in
which his mother and sisters had an interest. Faustinus, another
deacon, . had property in common with a brother. The priest
Leporius, who was of a good family, had sold his property, but
another priest Barnabas still owned the Fundus Victorianensis,
because he was paying off from its proceeds an old debt incurred
before his ordination: as he could find no tenant who would pay
more than 40 solidi in rent, he ran it by direct labour and sold the
crops. At Ravenna in 540 a deacon of the Gothic church sold one-
third of a fundus to another deacon for I 33 solidi, and in 6 5 2 a
subdeacon of the catholic church owned besides two houses, a
bakery and a garden, a farm called the Fundus Carpinianus.lo
The navicu!arii were by definition landowners; the government
paid them freight but expected them to make up their losses and
build and maintain their ships from their rents. We meet with
772 THE LAND
private traders and craftsmen who owned land. An early fourth
century land register from Hermopolis records a number of urban
workers-a builder, a potter, a fuller, three wool workers, a money
changer and a donkey man-as owning small parcels ofland. Sixth-
century deeds from Ravenna reveal a similar situation. In 5 04
Flavius Basilius, a silversmith (argcntarius), sold a piece of land for
eighteen solidi: in 541 Isaac, a soapmaker (saponarius), bought a
share of a farm for twenty solidi: and in 572 Bonus, a breeches
maker (bracarius), gave five-eighths of a farm to the Ravennate
church.
11
The Hermopolis land resister mentioned above shows how many
city dwellers owned land 1n Egypt in the early fourth century. It
is a list of the landowners resident in the North Fort ward of
Hermopolis and contains about 240 names: this implies nearly
I ,coo urban landlords in the four wards into which Hermopolis
was divided. Of the 240 landowners in the North ward seven
between them owned about half the total area, and seven others
about another quarter. These large owners, all above the 250
arura mark, would presumably have been decurions, and so too
might have been six others who owned between 200 and reo arurac
each. This would account for about So Hermopolis landlords.
Below come 22 who owned between 30 and 100 arurac, 90 who
owned between ro and 30 arurac and 66 with less than ro arurac each.
There must have been well over 700 modest and small landowners,
below the curial class, who were domiciled in the town of Hermo-
polis and for the most part did not work their own land.l2
The wide distribution oflanded property among the professional
classes and other city dwellers can be accounted for in two ways.
In the first place the professions were largely recruited from the
landowning class. The Codes reveal how many curialcs went into
the civil service, the army, the law, the church, medicine and
teaching; and at a humbler level peasant proprietors and sons of
veteran allotment holders were conscripted into the army or made
their way into the lower ranks of the civil service. In the second
place land was almost the only safe and permanent form of invest-
ment, and successful professional men and merchants and crafts-
men, who wished to provide for their old age and for their families,
did so by buying land.
Altogether a high proportion of the land in the empire must
have been owned by absentee landlords. The crown, the cities
and the churches were of necessity absentees. By no means all
senators were domiciled at Rome or Constantinople, but those
who lived in the provinces could not have resided on all their
far-flung estates. Decurions were better able to exercise g ~ n e r l
THE PEASANT FREEHOLDER
773
supervision over their farms, but they were legally obliged to
reside in town and forfeited their estates if they took up permanent
residence on them. Officials and professional men were tied by
their work to the towns, and most lawyers and officials to the bigger
cities, the provincial, diocesan or imperial capitals. The higher
clergy were also from the nature of their duties city dwellers,
and the humblest class of landowners, the craftsmen and shop-
keepers, were kept busy by their trades in the towns.
Despite the large and growing amount of land owned by land-
lords who did not work it themselves the peasant proprietor
never became extinct in the Roman empire. That the class declined
in numbers is tolerably certain, though it would be difficult to
cite much precise evidence for this statement. It might seem at
first sight as if the peasant proprietor, who paid only his taxes on
his land, stock and family, was in a stronger economic position
than the tenant, who had to pay a rent in addition to these, or
if his landlord, as was usually the case, paid the taxes, was charged
a rent which considerably exceeded the sum due in tax.
It is probable, however, that peasant properties were on the
whole smaller than rented farms, and tended to get smaller a.s
from generation to generation they were divided between the
heirs. Naturally they varied very greatly in size. The early fourth
century land register of the Egyptian village of Theadelphia shows
wide divergences. One of the twelve peasants listed owns 5 S!
arurac and two others 47!; but six have very small holdings, 12,
12, 8!, 3!, r ~ and r! arurac. The size of leased farms was on the
other hand fixed by the landlord of the estate, who would calculate
how much land could be conveniently worked by a tenant, and
would have no motive for splitting up his farms. A sixth-century
rent roll of an estate in the territory of Patavium confirms this
hypothesis. It shows, besides a small home farm cultivated by the
bailiff (vilicus) and two water meadows (paludcs) leased to dairy
farmers, six tenements leased to coloni (colonicac ). One bears the
same name as the home farm, and has evidently been carved out of
it; the others all have their own names, Candidiana, Valeriaca,
Severiaca and the like, derived from some bygone tenant. They
are evidently stable traditional units; one is (perhaps temporarily)
divided between two co!oni, most are cultivated by a group of two,
three or four coloni. The rents are very uniform, ranging from
5 solidi 2 r si!iquac for the largest farm, cultivated by four
tenants, to 3 solidi 3 si!iquac for the smallest. These are substantial
774
THE LAND
rents and imply that the colonicae must have been fair-sized
farms.
13
There were, moreover, many disadvantages from which the
small man suffered, and these partly counterbalanced his freedom
from rent. The regular taxation was in theory uniform for all
c!asses, but the assessment was not always fair: imperial constitu-
tiOns fulminate against tabularii of cities who under-assess the
lands of the rich and influential, and throw the resulting burden
?n the _holders. It was moreover possible for those with
mfluence m high quarters to obtain reduced rates of tax or assess-
ment for their lands, and if cities received rebates of tax or reduc-
tions of assessment, it Salvian complains, the richer landowners
who secured all the relief for tllemselves. It was furthermore
the . landowners w.ho profited most from periodical
renuss10n of arrears, which were a regular fiscal practice for they
could keep the tax collector waiting. Even on the of the
regular land tax, tllen, the peasant proprietor was in fact worse off
than his richer neighbours. But in addition to the regular tax
there were superindictions, extraordinaria and munera sordida.
Fro.m these certain categories of landowners were exempt-
besides. tlle crown and the churches, palatine officials of many
categones, and from 409 senators of illustrious rank. It would,
moreover, appear both from the Codes and from Salvian tllat in
the of extraordi?aria on. a city the local big landlords,
the prznctpales of the council, contrived to lay the burden on their
smaller neighbours.14
It was probably, however, not so much the pressure of regular
which crushed the peasant freeholders as sudden strokes
.misfortune. To meet these the owner of an exiguous holding,
l!vmg from hand to mouth as h.e did, could not accumulate any
reserve. If there were a successton of bad harvests or his crops
were repeatedly ravaged, if his beasts died of disease or were
requisitioned and never returned or carried off by barbarian
raiders, had nothing to fall back' upon and unless he mortgaged
or sold his land he starved. In similar circumstances a tenant also
starved, but landowner did not have to sell; he was less likely
to lose all hts crops or his stock, and moreover had reserves of
cash to tide him over.
. Faced by tlle inexorable demands of the tax collector in such
ctrcumstances the freeholder might abandon his land and
employn;ent with one of the neighbouring landowners, who,
being perenntally short of labour, were always glad to take on
any man ":ho offered himself. as a labourer or tenant. A papyrus
from the village of Theadelphta, dating from 3 3 2, vividly illustrates
THE PEASANT FREEHOLDER 775
such a situatio? The disaster in this case was that for several years
the water whtch should have reached tlle village, which lay at
the end of a long canal, had been intercepted by other villages
nearer the source. Most of the twenty-five adult males on the
census books of the village had vanished, and the three survivors-
who incidentally possessed the largest holdings-went in search of
fou?d them in the employ of big landowners
1n netghbourmg terrttortes. A century later Salvian in Gaul
lamented the many peasants who 'are driven to flight by the tax
collectors and abandon their little holdings because they cannot
retain them, and seek out the estates of great men and become the
tenants of the rich'.t5
A less desperate remedy was to sell his land for what it would
fetch in such circumstances, or to raise a loan on its security,
on ex'?r?itant tern;s which made ultimately
tnevttable. J ustmtan found lt necessary to gtve spectal protection
to small holders in Thrace and Illyricum against lenders of money
or of corn. He limited the annual rate of interest to one siliqua in
the solidus (or slightly over 5 %) on money loans, and one-eighth
(or 12!%) on loans in kind, and enacted that if this were paid
the debt, the lender must. restore tlle land or stock
which he had setzed. The lenders were, 1t appears, mainly officials,
probably collectors of taxes or arrears, who made a practice of
converting the obligation to the state into a private bond to
themselves.t6
An even commoner resort of a peasant freeholder driven to
desperation was to seek the patronage of a powerful person.
Patronage is a vague term and seems to cover many different
forms of contract, legal or illegal, which prevailed at various
periods in various areas. Libanius describes in great detail the
form of patronage which was prevalent in Syria in the late fourth
century. Here it was used both by villages of freeholders and by
villages owned by a landlord, by the former against the tax collector
and by the latter against the landlord himself. The villagers
would pay a regular bribe to the dux of the province to station
troops in their village. When the curial susceptores arrived to collect
the taxes or the landlord or his agent to collect the rents, they
were forcibly ejected with the aid of the troops, who had been well
entertained by the villagers. If the susceptores or the landlord sought
legal redress, the dux would claim the case for his court, since
soldiers were among the defendants, and would give judgment
for the villagersP
From a group of constitutions in the Theodosian Code it appears
that patronage of a similar type was rampant in the same period in
776 THE LAND
:f:gypt. The patrons singled out for censure are persons holding
high offices, particularly duces, and officials of the military comes
Aegypti. The clients are peasant freeholders, whose object it is to
evade their taxes and other public obligations, and they pay a
regular fee to their patrons. Sometimes it is a whole v.illage which
takes this step, sometimes individual freeholders, who thereby
throw an additional burden on their fellow villagers. Other laws
of the same period addressed to the praetorian prefect of the East
seem to have been of wider application. They refer to magistri
militum, comites, proconsuls, vicars, Augustal prefects, tribunes
and even decurions as exercising patronage. IS
A of 415 treats the in Egypt in detail. Three
comm1ss1oners had been appomted to deal with the problem.
Their investigations are closed, and no further charges of alleged
are to be if t?ey before 3 97: patrons who
took chents under the1r protectiOn smce that date are to be tried
before the normal court of the Augustal prefect. Those villages
of freeholders (metrocomiae or publici vici) which had survived
were to remain independent, and no outsider was to own land in
them, unless acquired before 397, .or henceforth to acquire it.
churches of Constantinople and Alexandria were, by a special
pnv1lege conceded by the previous praetorian prefect, to retain
metrocomiae and publici vici which had come under their protection,
provided that the villagers paid all their taxes and performed all
the public functions due from them according to the old rules.l9
Further clauses of the law, which are unfortunately most obscure,
deal with estates (possessiones) and their cultivators, who were by
local usage known as homologi coloni. These were to perform their
ancient public functions, like the inhabitants of the metrocomiae,
whether the estates remained under their old owners or were
retained by patrons. The possessiones envisaged appear to be
estates which had been built up out of village lands by outside
landl?rds and were cultivated by their tenants, who, however,
remal?ed on the register of the villagers-this is perhaps the
meanmg of homologi-and were legally liable to share in their
obligations to the state. The owners of some such estates, pre-
sumably the smaller men, would seem to have sought the patronage
of the powerful.20
. In its earlier this oriental form of patronage did not
;nvolve :he m the loss <?f his land. The small proprietor
m the VIllage pa1d an annual tnbute to his protector, and if his
was the militu;n, the dux of the province or the
tribune of the local urut, or agam the vicar of the diocese for the
time being, the relationship was unlikely to become permanent.
777
These officers were, however, usually landowners on a considerable
scale, and might continue their protection not in their official
capacity but as men of power and influence; moreover, some
villagers and small proprietors sought the patronage of big
landowners as such; curiale.r are mentioned in these laws as patrons,
and so are the great churches, which had far-flung estates. Such
patrons tended to become permanent and their annual tribute to
become a rent, until eventually their patronage of the peasants was
converted into ownership of the land under some legal form of
donation, sale or lease.
The fifth-century emperors continued to legislate against
patronage. Marcian issued a constitution, which has not been
preserved, annulling contracts of patronage entered into since
437 in the diocese of Thrace, and since 441 in those of Asiana,
Pontica, Oriens and Egypt. This law was re-enacted in 468 by Leo,
who declared null all contracts of patronage under whatever legal
form from the same dates, whether affecting individuals or villages.
These two laws dealt only with freeholders who sought to evade
payment of their taxes. A later undated law deals also with villages
of slaves or free tenants who revolted against their landlords under
the protection of a patron. The patrons in this law are of the old
type, described by Libanius, who are recompensed by a regular
tribute and not, as in Leo's law, by ownership of the land.21
In the East the government, in the interest of the revenue,
waged periodical campaigns against patronage. It was obliged to
condone long-standing violations of the law, and it must have
been very difficult to distinguish patronage in its later forms from
genuine gifts and sales. One may well doubt whether the govern-
ment's intervention was very effective, despite the ever severer
penalties with which it threatened either party, seeing that normally
both parties would maintain a conspiracy of silence.
In the West our information is much more meagre. There are
no imperial constitutions on the subject and we have to rely on
the rhetorical and rather obscure account of the institution by
Salvian. There the patron is a great landlord, who offers his
protection to the individual peasant against the tax collector in
return for the reversion of the peasant's land on his death. The
tragic sequel seems to be rather overdrawn. The sons, according
to Salvian, 'though despoiled of their little properties and expelled
from their little fields, nevertheless bear the taxation of the property
that they have lost. When the possession has left them, the tribute
does not ... , the land-grabbers invade their property and they,
poor wretches, pay the taxes for the land-grabbers'. This pre-
sumably means not that the sons were physically expelled but
THE LAND
that the patron, once securely in possession of the land after the
death of the original client, no longer protected his sons, who
were now his tenants, from the tax collector's exactions. It is
likely enough that patrons did pursue this policy, not wishing to
fall foul of the imperial government unnecessarily, but the implica-
tion that their tenants gained nothing is almost certainly untrue;
they would pay the regular taxes but be spared many additional
exactions.22
The fact that no imperial legislation against patronage survives
in the West does not prove that the practice was rare. The Western
government at the time when patronage was becoming rife in the
East was falling into the hands of the great territorial magnates
who mainly p.rofited by the process, and they are likely to have
looked with a blind eye upon it.
Generation after peasants abandoned their holdings,
sold them to wealthy neighbours, mortgaged them and suffered
foreclosure, or surrendered them to patrons in return for protec-
tion. To set against this there was very little increase in peasant
holdings. The government, it is true, made grants of waste land
to veterans in the fourth century. These were on two scales
according to a law of V alentinian. Ordinary soldiers received one
yoke of oxen and 50 modii of seed corn, enough to sow ten or
twelve iugera; those retired with the rank of protector were given
two yokes of oxen, and twice as much seed. The author of the
De Re bus Bellicis, who addressed his pamphlet to V alentinian, was
an enthusiast for this policy, and urged that the term of service
should be shortened, partly with a view to increasing the number
of these peasant cultivators. The policy seems, however, to have
been abandoned shortly afterwards. 23
Estates, when they came on to the market, seem never to have
been broken up. Few peasants probably had enough money laid
by to purchase land, and the tenants of the estate were almost
certainly too poor to buy their holdings. What was more important
there was always an abundance of rich men eager to snap up any
land that was offered for sale. Melania, when she sold her vast
estates, found no shortage of wealthy purchasers, who, if they
could not find the ready cash with so much land thrown on the
market at once, could offer good security. It does not seem to
have occurred to this pious lady to offer favourable terms to her
tenants.
24
In these circumstances the number of peasant freeholders must
have steadily diminished, particularly from the end of the fourth
century, when entire villages were passing into the possession of
patrons. It must, however, be emphasised that the evidence which
779
has been cited for the gradual elimination of peasants' properties
is also evidence for their continued survival. If the flight of free-
holders from their farms and the surrender of their farms by their
peasant owners to patrons were common phenomena in Gaul in
his day, as Salvian declares, there must still have been a substantial
number of small freeholders left in Gaul in the middle of the fifth
century. If the activity of moneylenders in Illyricum and Thrace
caused grave anxiety to Justinian, there must have been a large
number of peasants to mortgage their farms in the sixth century in
these areas. Libanius in the later fourth century divided the villages
of Syria into two categories, those owned by one landowner, and
those divided between many small holders; and Theodoret in the
middle of the fifth century still speaks of these two classes of
village.
25
On Asia Minor we have no specific information, but the long
and detailed biography of Theodore of Syceon, who spent his
whole life ministering in the villages around Anastasiopolis in
Galatia during the early seventh century, gives the impression
that the villagers were peasant proprietors: no landlord appears in
the narrative save the church of Anastasiopolis. In Mrica, the
classical land of great estates, a group of documents has come to
light which show that in the last years of the fifth century Mancian
tenures still subsisted. These were not freeholds, it is true. They
originated in the policy of the early second century emperors,
and probably of other African landlords, of granting perpetual
leaseholds to persons, normally their tenants, who brought waste
land on their estates into cultivation, and especially planted them
with vines, olives or fruit trees. Mancian tenures were subject to
a rent in kind, usually one-third of the produce, but they could be
left by will or sold by the holder. The documents record the sale
of a dozen or so of these tiny holdings, each with a few fruit trees
or olives; it is perhaps significant of the trend of the times that all
were sold to one purchaser.26
It is only in Egypt that we can very roughly measure the decline
of the peasant proprietors. Egypt was a somewhat exceptional
country in that the fiscal policy of the Ptolemies, continued under
the Principate, had discouraged the growth of large estates, or
indeed of private property in land. Some land, however, usually
of marginal quality, was sold or granted to private owners, and
by the Principate there had grown up a small class of substantial
landowners, resident in the metropoleis of the nomes, who from
the reign of Septimius Severus were enrolled in the city councils.
The bulk of the land, however, remained public, and was cultivated
by peasants in small holdings on lease from the crown. When
s
THE LAND
Diocletian finally converted the nomes into cities, the division of
the land into public and private was not abolished, but it gradually
ceased to be significant and the peasants came to be owners of
their customary tenures.
In the early fourth century peasant proprietors were then
exceptionally numerous in Egypt. The census register of Hermo-
polis shows 14,700 arurae in the possession of landlords resident
in one of thefourwards, which implies rather less than 6o,ooo arurae
owned by all the inhabitants of Hermopolis; Antinoite citizens
also owned 6, 700 arurae, making a total of about 66,ooo arurae
owned by urban landlords. The territory of Hermopolis must,
estimating its area from the map, have comprised about 4oo,ooo
arurae; that is to say only about one-sixth of the city territory was
owned by urban landlords, and the remaining five-sixths by peasant
villagers, who were entered on separate registers. The only village
on which we have sufficient information, Theadelphia in the
Arsinoite territory, yields similar results. The total area of the
village was 5 eo arurae, and of this only two holdings, amounting
to 30 arurae, were in the early fourth century held by urban land-
lords.27
With these figures may be contrasted those relating to the estates
of the 'glorious house' ofFlavius Apion's heirs in the sixth century.
In a comparable area, the combined territories of Oxyrhynchus
and Cynopolis, which totalled z8o,ooo arurae, the Apion family
alone owned two-fifths, nz,ooo arurae, and Oxyrhynchus, the
capital of a province, certainly contained many other landlords of
some substance. But even in the sixth century the peasant pro-
prietor was by no means extinct. We possess a large group of
documents from the village of Aphrodito in the territory of
Antaeopolis, which show that its peasant freeholders were still
maintaining their rights, of which the principal was autopragia,
the privilege of collecting their own taxes and delivering them
direct to the provincial governor, in Justinian's reign and indeed
down to the Arab conquest.2s
Peasant proprietorship was perhaps more strongly rooted and
survived more vigorously in Egypt than in most dioceses. But
there is evidence which suggests that it was strong in other areas
of the Eastern empire. Justinian was able to raise considerable
armies from among his subjects, particularly in Illyricum and Thrace
and in eastern Asia Minor, whence came the !saurian regiments.
These men were certainly countrymen, and they were not adscrip-
ticii, the tied tenants of landlords (including the church and the
crown), who had been since the early fifth century debarred from
military service. They may have included free tenants, but it
4
'
ESTATES
seems likely that many were freeholders. Justinian's anxiety to
protect the free peasants of Illyricum and Thrace against money-
lenders is more understandable if they were an important recruiting
ground.
29
For the West there less evidence for the survival of the peasant
freeholder, whereas evidence for absentee landlords, great, middling
and small, is abun?ant. In Italy and Sicily we know of many
vast massae and jundz owned by the crown, the church and senatorial
families. In Spain again we know of large senatorial estates some
owned by Italian families, like those of Melania and
son;e by senators of local. origin, like Theodosius the magiste;
mtlztum or the Didymus and Verinianus, two wealthy
young nobles, who, m the fifth century, raised a private
army from the slaves on their estates and maintained it at their
own charges. In Mrica, too, we have much evidence for large
estates owned by the crown, the church, Roman senators like
J?arr;machius and Pinianus, and local magnates such
as Gildo; whlle m Gaul we know of great senatorial landowners
like Paulinus of Nola and Sidonius Apollinaris. These big
estates must have occupied a large proportion of the total area.
We can infer the existence of a large number of more modest
estates from the survival of the curial order, which still existed in
Visigothic Gaul and Spain in the early sixth century and is well
attested down to the seventh in Italy. In Italy we 'hear also of
small farms or parts of farms owned by other urban residents
officials, soldiers, the minor clergy and merchants or craftsmen'
an.d similar conditions may. be postulated. elsewhere. As
this we have only the testimony of Salvian for the survival of
the peasant freeholder in Gaul, and in Africa the documents which
reveal the continued existence of Mancian tenures. so
Landlords, both great and small, rarely owned a single con-
solidated estate. Their possessions were usually scattered and
consisted of a number of farms, some larger, some smaller. The
greatest landlord of the empire, the re.r privata, owned besides some
large of territory, m?stly ancient royal lands, countless
estates which had accrued to It by bequest, escheat or confiscation
in every province and in almost every city. The great churches
as a result of donations and bequests from emperors and othe;
great benefactors, acquired very far-flung estates. In the fourth
century the lands .of.the Roman church .mostly in Italy,
where they were distnbuted over twenty-five cities, but included
782 THE LAND
also two large groups of estates in Sicily, seven in Africa
and two in Achaea, as well as a number of estates m the East at
Antioch Tarsus Alexandria, Tyre, Cyrrhus and elsewhere. By
the of the the patrimony of St. had
grown considerably: _it no": :ncluded not only m
Sicily and Africa but m Sardm1a and Corsica, Gaul and Dalmatm.
The lands of the Great Church of Constantinople were as widely
dispersed: its estate office was into. for the
dioceses of Thrace Asiana, Pont1ca and Onens, and lt IS known
to have owned lands in Egypt also. The sees of two other imperial
capitals, Milan Raver:na, ow?ed far-flung estates;
had properties m Bonorua, Urbmum, Luca, Forum Cornelu,
Ariminum and Agubium, and both .are known to ha':e. had land
in Sicily. Great cities also sometimes possessed CIVIC est.ates
outside their own territories. In the early fourth century Antmo-
opolis owned four farms with a total area of 5 zo arurae in the terri-
tory of Hermopolis, and Zeno to _Nicaea :' of
estates with a total rental of 400 solid!, which lay m the ne1gh- ,
bouring territory of Apamea.
31
The estates of great private !and.lords were oft.en scattered
many provinces. Symmachus m his letters mentiOns twelv:e villas
which he owned in various parts of Italy, and speaks of h1s lands
in Samnium, Si<;ilY and Mauretru:ia. biographer of
Melania draws a VIVId p1cture of her makmg leisurely
from Rome to Carthage, systematically sellmg her m
Campania, Apulia, Sicily, Africa, Numidia and Mauretarua: she
also owned lands in Spain, which were at the moment
owing to the babarian invasions, and even, we are told, m Bntam.
Senators had many opportunities . of acquiring in
provinces. Though they forb.1dden t? explOit
in this way they marned nch heiresses m the provmces wh1ch
they It was probably as a result o.f such a marriage
that Paulinus owned lands not only near Burd1gala, the home of
his grandfather Ausonius, in Achaea C?Jd and Ne':' Epirus:
he inherited the latter from h1s mother, and lt IS perhaps significant
that he was born at Pella and that his father was vicar of Macedonia
at that time.
32
Senators also despite the Jaws abused their official powers
to make advantageous purchases in the provinces, and took
advantage of their influence. at to grants of property
accruing to the crown. An mterestmg p1cture of a great property
of senatorial proportions, which was mainly built up bJ;
and grants from the crown, is given by the very detailed will. of
a Merovingian royal favourite, Bertram. He was apparently a native

'
ESTATES
of Burdigala entered the service of King Lothar at Paris, and was
promoted tC: be archdeacon of Paris and then, in 5 86, ?f
the Civitas Cenomanorum (Le Mans). When Guntram died m
593 he suffered, he complains, great losses in the subsequent
troubles but remained steadfastly loyal to Lothar, and when
Lothar in 6 I 3 became king of all Gaul reaped a rich reward for his
loyalty. He seems to have come from a prosperous family of middie
rank inheriting a house at Burdigala and eight villas and one
colonlca in the territory of that city and its neighbour, the Civitas
Santonum: some of these properties he originally shared with
his brothers, but by outliving them he ultimately concentrated
most of the family inheritance in his own hands. To these estates
he added a few by legacies or gifts and many more by purchase or
by royal grant. He mentions two villas and half dozen other
properties which were left or given to him by pnvate
and over twenty-six villas, as well as miscellaneous minor properties
such as vineyards, houses and a pine plantation, which he bought
out of his own money, besides five villas which he bought fr?m
money given him by the king. He also received from the kmg
eleven named villas and two other properties and a house; a half
share in the extensive estates of A vitus in the territories of Bituriges,
Cadurci, Alba and Agennum; a third share in another group
of villas in Burgundy, formerly the property of Landeges1l; and a
third share in yet another group in Provence which had belonged
to Aureliana. These were free gifts. In addition he was granted,
in compensation for losses in the troubles, three named villas and
others in the territories of Pictavi, Cadurci and Lemovices from the
estate of a lady named Nunciana, who had usu:pe?
of his property. Altogether he names over e1ghty 1?d1:V1dual
properties, besides five groups of estates. They were d1stnbuted
over fourteen city territories, from Paris to Bordeaux, from
the property in Burgundy and Provence. of the Items ':'ere
no doubt small: for one he paid only 40 sohd1. But of the vdlas
which he bought some were quite substantial-for one paid
Ioo solidi for another I40, and in two cases 3oo-wh1le one,
, 33
whose price was I ,ooo, must have been very large.
This fortune is probably typical of many made by new men of
the senatorial order, except that their estates would have been
even more widely dispersed. Such great agglomerations were from
time to time broken up by division between heirs, and parts of
them were added to other agglomerations through the marriages
of heiresses. Hence the complexity and dispersion of the average
senatorial fortune.
On the gross area of the great senatorial estates we have very
THE LAND
little information. In the sixth century the contribution of 'the
glorious house' of the Apion family in the Oxyrhynchite and
Cynopolite territory to the embo!e, the corn levy for Constantinople,
amounted to nearly r4o,ooo artabae. A contemporary document
(from another city, Antaeopolis) gives the rate of the levy at
approximately I l artabae to the arttra. The A pion estates in this
district (they also owned large areas in the Heracleopolite and
Arsinoite) would therefore have covered Iu,ooo arurae, about
75,000 acres or I20 square miles.34
For other senatorial families we have only the rentals of their
estates. The figures are probably net, representing the actual
income received after the actores had paid the taxes locally. The
above-mentioned Apion estates would have yielded, according to
the rates of rent tax normally prevalent in sixth-century Egypt,
about 2o,ooo sohd1 a year, very nearly 3 centenaria of gold. To
produce the incomes of I 5 centenaria enjoyed by Western senators
of middling wealth far more than five times I 20 square miles would
have been needed, for the yield and therefore the rental value of
land in Egypt was much higher than in other parts of the empire.
The richest Roman senators, whose income was in the range of
40 centenaria of gold, must have owned several thousand square
miles.
The landed property of lesser men also usually consisted of a
group of farms, though these were not as a rule so widely dispersed.
We possess a small part of an early fourth century land register
from Magnesia on the Maeander. It is an alphabetical list of farms,
assessed in iuga and capita, with the owners' names: the surviving
portion covers the letters A and B only. In this we find that
Severianus, a tribune, owned five separate farms with these initials
and Paulus, a decurion, four. From another contemporary registe;
we learn that Tatianus, a rich decurion of Tralles, owned fourteen
estates, six quite small (under one iugum), seven of moderate size
(rt to 6 iuga) and one as large as the total holding of his more
modest colleague, Latron ( 11! iuga). Latron's property was
formed of four estates, and Critias (with 20 iuga in all) owned
seven the Hermopolis register the land of the larger
owners 1s d1stnbuted over several of the r 8 pagi into which the
territory of the city was divided. One owner held land in ro pagi
two in 9, and others in 8, 7, or 6; only one large property, actually
the largest (I,370 arurae), was all in a single pagus.as
Men of cunal status normally owned land only within the
territory of their own cities. Sometimes, however, the richer
among them had acquired estates in neighbouring cities too. In
the early fourth century four prominent decurions of Antinoopolis,

ESTATES
a former president, a former exactor and two former curatores,
owned estates in the territory of Hermopolis. Letoius, a very
wealthy Antiochene decurion of Libanius' time, is known to have
owned a village in the territory of Cyrrhus.
In Gaul in the sixth century bishop Remigius left a most com-
plicated estate, though quite a small one, and all in the territory of
Remi. He had inherited from his father and mother lands in the
territory of Portus and from his brother Principius other lands in
the same place: this estate was apparently called V acculiacum.
He also owned part of another estate called Talpusciacum, part of
a third, Casurnicum, 'which came to me by the lot of the division',
part of a fourth called Setia, near Laudunum, part of a meadow at
Laud unum of which his nephew Lupus owned the rest, some other
meadows called Iovia, a field next the mill at Vongum, a holding
(co!onica) called Passiacum, and half a dozen vineyards, including
one on the river Subnis, one at Laudunum and a third at Vin-
donissa which he had planted himself. The will well illustrates
the complication of land tenure caused by the division of estates
between a number of heirs. Even tiny properties might consist
of several separate holdings. A Hermopolitan who owned only
nine arurae in all had three tenants, one of whom leased four and
the others two and a half arurae each. as
A map of any Roman province, or even civitas, showing the
boundaries of properties, would thus have been a very complicated
jigsaw puzzle. In Italy and the Western provinces the basic unit
of ownership was the fundus. Fundi were fairly stable units with
permanent individual names, sometimes descriptive, but most
usually derived from a long past owner-Fundus Cornelianus is
the typical form. They were naturally not of a standard size.
In the lists of estates given by Constantine to the Roman churches
there is a fundus with as large a rental as I 20 solidi, and, at the other
end of the scale, another which brought in only 20 solidi. Well
over half, however, range between 6o and 40 solidi. The average
size of this group of fundi is perhaps rather high, for they were
grants from the res privata, which got most of its land from well-to-
do owners. The Ravenna deeds deal on the whole with smaller
fundi, owned by humble people. Here only one is worth 400 solidi in
capital value, which is on the same level as the smallest Constantinian
estates, the rest are worth only sums like uo, 72, 48 and even
28 solidi. A fundus was not an indivisible unit. Humbler land-
owners, who owned only one, had to divide it between their heirs,
or might sell off a bit if hard up. In the Ravenna deeds most of
the transactions are in fractions of fundi, a half, a third or even a
sixth or an eighth.a7
THE LAND
Richer men, who owned several fundi, had less reason to sub-
divide an individual farm, and the richest, including the crown
and the great churches, who owned many, grouped them into
massae. Massae again were not of standard size. The Constantinian
list contains one with a rental of only I I 5 solidi, less than the
largest fundus, but the majority are from 65o to 300 solidi. There
are larger massae in the list, of 720, 8oo, 8IO and I,ooo solidi,
and one monster in Sicily with a rental of I,65o. Massae
were not necessarily continuous blocks of land, but rather a
group of fundi under one management. A large massa in the
territory of Signia which was given to a church in Rome in the
sixth century consisted of 3 I complete fundi, the halves of two
others and a third of another. This strongly suggests that there
were at any rate enclaves in the block: no doubt the three frag-
mentary fundi had already been split before the owners of the
massa acquired them and they had apparently not yet been able to
buy up the odd bits. Massae were fairly stable units, which ac-
quired permanent names, usually formed like those of fundi from
the name of the original owner, but they might naturally be divided
up again. In 55 3 a noble but illiterate couple, named Felithan and
Runilo (probably of Gothic descent), gave the church of Ravenna
the half of two massae, one in the territory of Urbinum and the
other in that of Luca. King Odoacer, having promised land to
the annual value of 690 solidi to the illustrious Pierius, first gave
him the island of Melita in Dalmatia (2oo solidi a year) and lands
to the value of 4 5o solidi a year from the Massa Pyramitana in the
territory of Syracuse. When Pierius applied for the remaining
40 solidi he was given the Fundus Aemilianus (I 8 solidi), the rest
of the Fundus Dubli (I 5! solidi) and part of the Fundus Putaxiae
( 7 solidi), all out of the same Massa Pyramitana. as
Big landowners then as always liked if possible to consolidate
their estates by buying up intervening or adjacent properties.
This is well illustrated by Bertram's will. When Queen Ingoberg
gave half an estate to his church, he bought the other half from
her brother 'so that the estate might come in its entirety into the
possession of the church'. Similarly he bought from the widow
and other heirs of Bobolenus the other half of the Villa Colonia,
of which Bobolenus had given a half share to the church. Bertram
also consolidated his personal estates. Thus he had acquired the
Villa Brea partly by gift from one Daulfus and partly by purchase,
and when King Lothar granted him part of the Villa Tauriaco from
the estate of Nunciana he bought the rest from her sons.
39
Naturally, therefore, the wealthier and older the family, the
larger tended to be the blocks in which its estates were held. Some

ESTATES
of Melania's estates were vast. Her biographer describes one
near Rome which stretched from the sea at one end to the forest
at the other, and contained besides a magnificent villa sixty-two
hamlets of about four hundred slaves each. In Africa, according
to Agennius Urbicus, 'saltus owned by private persons are as
large as the territories of cities; indeed many saltus are far larger
than territories. Moreover on private saltus there is a not in-
considerable plebeian population and villages around villa
like municipia'. Melania endowed the church of Tagaste w1th such
an estate, which was larger than that city itself, 'with a villa and
many craftsmen, gold, silver and coppersmiths, and two bishops,
one of our faith and one of the heretics'. Many African cities were,
of course, very small, and African bishops were two a penny, so
that this estate need not have been as vast as the hagiographer
suggests. 40
Senatorial estates were not all large. The inheritance of
Paulinus' mother was 'dispersed over several cities of Achaea
and Old and New Epirus, over which there were scattered, but
not at great distances, estates well stocked with numerous culti-
vators'. In the surviving portion of the land register of Magnesia
on the Maeander, the largest estate by far-assessed at 75 iuga,
more than three times as big as the next largest, one of 2 I iuga
owned by a decurion-is the property of a senator; but three
other senators and two ladies of senatorial rank own six quite
modest farms. The lands of the Apion family, who had in the
sixth century only recently risen to great wealth, consisted of a
huge agglomeration of quite sr;nall holdings, from
(lnobaa) and farms ('m)pma) to httle peasant tenements w1thm
villages.
41
In Syria both Libanius and Theodoret classify villages into two
contrasted types, those owned by one landlord and those owned
by many peasant proprietors, and imperial constitutions imply a
similar division in Egypt between the metrocomiae and publici vici
on the one hand and the possessiones with their homol?gi o.n
the other. This distinction must be rather schemat1c, for 1t 1s
likely that some small holdings survived among or within large
estates, and certain that outside landlords often owned land within
metrocomiae. Some already did so before 397 and though the
acquisition of land in free villages by outsiders was prohibited _in
4I 5 and again by Leo in 468, it certainly went on: the A pion
held much land so situated in the sixth century. Broadly speaking,
however, the picture presented by Libanius, Theodoret and !he
constitutions is no doubt true to the facts, and probably applied
to other regions. In some parts this state of affairs may have been
788 THE LAND
very ancient. The Hellenistic kings of Asia Minor and Syria, no
doubt following the precedent of their predecessors, not in-
frequently granted whole villages of their royal d.omain to their
officials courtiers and favourites. In other cases lt was a recent
result patronage, for patrons often acquired entire
The village was in Egypt, and probably elsewhere, a fiscal umt,
whose inhabitants were jointly responsible for the taxes, and
villages therefore often took joint action in the measures they
adopted to protect themselves. But even where large estates were
gradually built up in the territory of villages, they often tended to
become hamlets (lnobaa), no doubt because landlords preferred
to house tl!eir tenants on the estate. It was probably in this way
tl!at most landlords' villages were formed: the large fundus,
saltus or massa developed its own village, or even a group of
villages and hamlets. 4
2
Great landlords managed their estates in a variety of ways.
There were broadly three alternatives, to employ agents (pro-
curatores, actores), to lease their estates on short terms to contractors
(conductores), or to lease them for terms of lives or in perpetuity to
empryteuticarii or perpetuarii: these were also in strict law conductores,
but are often called posses sores. The three methods were employed
in different permutations and combinations by landlords of different
types, the crown, the churches and private owners, great and
medium. It will be simplest to take some representative examples
where our information is fullest.
The greatest of landlords, the res privata, had an elaborate
managerial hierarchy. For each diocese, or sometimes half diocese,
there was a magister, later rationalis, rei privatae. Below him were
procuratores rei privatae, responsible for a province or two, or for
a large nexus of estates which had once belonged to a single owner.
Below tl!em again were the actores dominici or rei privatae. It may
be that some of these last actually managed the estates, dealing
directly with the tenant cultivators (coloni), but normally conductores
performed this task.43
Some imperial estates were leased at short terms (probably the
lustrum of five years which was standard in Roman law). In that
case the conductor enjoyed no security of tenure, having to make
way for a rival who offered a higher rent unless he were prepared
to pay the same figure. On the other hand he was not in practice
free to throw up his lease, but might be compelled to renew at the
old figure. Leases were sometimes assigned compulsorily; this

ESTATE MANAGEMENT
practice applied particularly to the fundi iuris reipublicae and iuris
temp forum, the old civic and sacred lands, which in defa_ult of
lessees were allocated to the decurions who had ln old times
normally leased them. Already in Constantine's reign,. however,
a large proportion of imperial land was leased in perpetuity
to empryteuticarii or perpetuarii (the terms seem to be syno1_1ymous
in connection with state lands). The practice was convement for
the government, which received a steady, if reduced, income and
was spared the trouble of administration, and was also popular
with lessees, who gained a secure title, which could be alienated
or bequeathed, subject to a fixed rent-charge. More and more
imperial land passed into this category as time went on.
44
The church of Rome had also by the sixth century an elaborate
administrative hierarchy. The lands of the Roman see, known
collectively as the patrimony of Peter, were divided into regional
groups, each known as a pa.trimony. yve of the
patrimonies of Gaul, .Mnca,. of Dalmatia (w1th '?'ent
Praevalitana), and of S1cily, which was sometimes div1ded mto
two blocks administered from Syracuse and Panormus. In Italy
there are r:corded patrimonies of Apulia, Campania, and Appia,
the area south of Rome on tl!e Appian Way. At tl!e head of each
patrimony was a rector, who was usually one of the minor Roman
clergy, a subdeacon, notary or defensor, sent out for .a term of years.
Sometimes a local bishop acted as rector temporanly; we find the
bishop of Aries managing tl!e Gallic patrimony at times, and the
bishop of Syracuse the Sicilian. And sometimes a local layman of
high standing undertook the task: thus in Gaul, then by
the Merovingian kings, Gregory at first employed the
Dynamius and Aregius, no doubt because they could offer efficient
protection to the interests of the church.
45
Under tl!e rectores were actores or actionarii, and below them
conductores: we happen to know that in Sicily there were 400
conductores. The churches were by this time legally entitled to
grant emphyteutic leases, but Gregory was chary of them.
The bulk of the lands of tl!e Roman see was let on short leases;
it had become tl!e practice in Sicily for the agents to demand a
fine (commodum) for the grant of a lease, but Gregory prohibited
this abuse which led to the conductores being too frequently
changed. in other churches emphyteutic leases seem to have been
common in the Great Church of Constantinople the clerks at the
head (chartularii) who drew up the leases rect;ived a com-
mission of 1% on short lets and 2% on emphyteut!c

The Apion family, though their estates were concentra:ed m a
small area, also had an elaborate hierarchy of agents. At lts head
THE LAND
was the 'deputy landlord' (avuysovzo,;), under whom were a
number of chief agents (bwt"rl':at), and under each of them about
ten or a dozen inferior agents each of whom managed
three or four farms or hamlets and other small holdings in the
neighbourhood. The Apions did not use conductores at all, the
lower grade of agents dealing directly with the tenant cultivators
who often grouped into gangs under foremen
praepositus sacri cubiculi of Honorius, managed his
Sicilian estates m a very different way. They had fallen heavily
ir:to under the tribune Pyrrhus, who had apparently been
his prmcipal agent or procurator, and on sending out a successor
he wrote to his actores and his principal conductores. He owned
three massae, the Fadiliana which was leased to Sisinnius for
44 5 solidi, the C_assitana. held under a joint lease by three con-
ductores, Zos1mus and Eubulus, for 5 oo solidi, and
the by the sa.me Zosimus and a partner named
Cupno for 7 56 solidi; the last pa1r also leased the Fundus Anniana
and the Fundus Aperae, with rentals of 147 and 52 solidi:
and appears to h3;ve sublet another fundus for 2oo solidi.
Launcius thus. entrusted his estates to a small group of big con-
ductores, an? his actores cannot have had any direct concern with
ru:mmg of the property. For the rest we have little detailed
mformatwn, but from the legal texts it would appear that most
secular landlords had their procuratores and actores, and leased
their estates to conductores, though sometimes the actores may have
dealt with the coloni directly. Private landlords do not seem to
have emphyteutic leases on any large scale.47
. The Apwns employed free men for their agents. Those of the
higher grade ( btot"1jmf) are often given the title of comes and
even of illustris; this in sixth-century Egypt does not mean very
much, for such titles seem to have been given by courtesy to any
person of standing, but indicates that they were gentlemen of
some substance. The lower grade agents (neovorJraf) were naturally
humble folk. We possess the contract of one, Serenus who was a
deacon: he pai? twelve solidi for a year's engagement. In the West,
and probably m other Eastern provinces, actores were commonly
slaves or freedmen of the owner. Procuratores might also be freed-
men or but landlords often found it convenient to employ
perso_ns of higher status who could protect their interests more
effectivelY: An unnamed .Constantinopolitan senator in the reign
of Arcadms. used the metropolitan of Ephesus, to
look after. his estates 1n As1a; the arrangement was convenient to
both parties, for wher: Antoninus got into trouble with John
Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, his senatorial

'
ESTATE MANAGEN!ENT 791
employer was able to hold up proceedings against him. The
employment of clergy as procuratores was sufficiently common
for Marcian to suggest to the Council of Chalcedon that the practice
be forbidden. In Mr!ca a council of Carthage had pro-
hibited the clergy from servmg as procuratores in 349 Curiales
were also in demand and were forbidden to take such posts, lest
by. pledging their own lands as security to their employers they
should imperil the interests of the treasury, to which these same
lands stood as security for the taxes.48
Conductores might be slaves, usually of the landlord: Pope
Gelasius complains that a certain Ampliatus, a slave of the Roman
church, who had been a conductor of church lands and owed con-
siderable sums on this account, had had the effrontery to make a
will leaving his peculium away from the church. More commonly
conductores free and persons of substance, seeing that
they had to give secunty for the very considerable sums which
they handled. Curiales evaded the law which forbade them to be
procuratores ?Y actiflg as conductores, until this loophole was stopped
by Theodosms II m 439 It was also a common practice, noted in
a law of the same date, for would-be conductores to obtain a sinecure
palatine militia as protector, domesticus, agens in rebus or the like, so
that they could claim praescriptio fori against the jurisdiction of
the provincial governor or the vicar, or even the praetorian
prefect. Persons who had sufficient money and influence to get
such posts must have held some position in society. Soldiers were
also commonly employed as conductores: Justinian complains that
despite many laws not only scholares but regular soldiers serving
the .magistri militun; and foederati neglected. their military
duties and mstead of fightmg the enemy turned their arms against
the peasants whose rents they collected. The clergy, too, were
often employed in this capacity also. In Mrica the council of
Hippo in 393 prohibited bishops, priests and deacons from serving
as conductores of great landlords.49
The holders of emphyteutic and perpetual leases were no doubt
usually rich men; lands so leased were often in bad condition and
needed considerable capital outlay, which ruled out the poor man.
Moreover, they were a form of investment only slightly less
attractive than freehold land. For though they were burdened
with a perpetual rent, they were free, if state or church lands, as
they usually were, from superindictions, extraordinary levies and
munera sordida. It is probable that many empqyteuticarii and per-
petuarii were at the same time private landlords on a large scale.
Despite the legal difference in their position a short term con-
ductor and an actor who directly managed an estate were in practice
792 THE LAND
in a very similar situation. A condqctor contracted to pay owner
a fixed rent; an actor was strictly an agent who the
profits of the estate to the owner, but in fact the owner dtd not
expect to get more than the sum of the fixed rents of the coloni.
Both conductor and actor made their profit in extra levies and dues
from the co!oni. Both were primarily rent and tax collectors, but
both had supervisory duties as well. They had to see that the
holdings were cultivated, reclaim runaway slaves or (olonz, an?
take on new tenants. from outside when they were requtred and tf
they were available. They were also responsible for the observation
of the law on the estate: if a deserter were found on it or a pagan
sacrifice were celebrated or a heretical service held or coiners
plied their illicit trade, it was the actor or the conductor who. was
punished unless it could be proved that the owner had conmved.
On many estates actores and conductores probably did little more.
Under more enterprising landlords they maintained and improved
the equipment of the estates. The Apion family were particularly
active and through their hierarchy of agents planted out vineyards,
issued irrigating machinery to their tenants, built and
cisterns and farm buildings, and provided the bricks reqmred,
either by estate labour or by contract.
50
For the harvest and the vintage a good deal of casual labour was
employed. Some of this was drawn from the local peasant free-
holders: John Chrysostom castigates the great landlords of Antioch
for their meanness in paying the peasants who gathered the grapes
a miserable pittance in cash, and not allowing them any of the wme.
Townspeople also helped in the vintage; when King Cavades
invaded Mesopotamia in 5 o2, he captured not only the peasants
but many townsmen from Edessa and Carrhae as well, because
it was the vintage season. In Egypt a reserve of casual labour was
provided by the hordes of monks and hermits who peopled the
neighbouring deserts. According to Rufinus they flocked down
at harvest time and earned enough not only to keep themselves
for the rest of the year but to have a surplus to distribute in charity.
I as Rufinus tells us, a monk could make twelve artabae of wheat
by his harvest work, this is. possible; for twelve was a f';lll
year's ration, and monks lived on much less. In Mnca the ctr-
cumcellions, who are described as landless men who went around
the rural homesteads to earn their living, provided a pool oflabour
on which the great estates could draw.
5
1
Hired labourers seem very rarely to have been employed on a
. I

HIRED LABOUR AND SLAVES
793
permanent basis, though one is recorded to have complained:
'I am a hired labourer on the estate of a wicked grasping rich man,
and though I have been with him fifteen years, working night and
day, he cannot bring himself to give me my pay< The regular
cultivation of the estates was normally carried out etther by slaves
or by free tenants. Both classes of labour are regarded as normal
in the Codes, which contain much legislation on the complicated
questions arising out of intermarriage between them, but they give
no clue to their relative importance. There were certainly great
local and regional variations. In Egypt the papyri prove that
agricultural slavery was virtually unknown, and there is no
allusion to it in the abundant literary sources for Africa. These
two regions, both famous for their teeming peasant population,
may have been exceptional. In western Asia Minor and the
adjacent islands early fourth century census records give a little
information. On the island of Chios of thirteen farms four were
cultivated by slaves and co!oni, and nine by coloni only. On the
island of Thera the landowner Paregorius, who owned ten farms,
totalling 420 iugera of arable, I I o iugera of vineyard and 5 8o olive
trees, had two rustic slaves only. At Tralles two owners had no
slaves, Tatianus, the biggest landlord, had slaves assessed at 7t
capita and co!oni at 58 capita, while two others, Critias and Latron,
appear to have had about seven or eight times as many co!oni as
slaves. Here the slaves may well have been vilici or bailiffs, who
supervised the free tenants. In the island of Lesbos on the other
hand two farms are recorded with twenty-two and twenty-one
slaves respectively together with others where neither slaves nor
coloni are registered. Here it would seem that some landlords had
gangs of slaves with which they worked several farms. 5
2
In Italy slaves may have been commoner. On one of Melania's
massae near Rome there were sixty-two hamlets, each inhabited
by about four hundred slave cultivators, if the Latin version of
the biography is to be believed. From casual references in the
letters of the fifth and sixth century popes it appears that both
the Roman church and neighbouring landlords owned agricultural
slaves, but co!oni are also frequently mentioned: the Sicilian estates
of the Roman see appear to have been cultivated by free co!oni.
In Spain Orosius speaks of Didymus and Verinianus raising a
private army from their agricultural slaves, an.d the laws of the
Visigothic kings and the canons of the Spamsh counctls often
speak of the servi jisca!es of the state lands and the slaves on the
church estates. From Gaul one document, the will of bishop
Remigius, records in some detail the number of workers on each
farm and vineyard, but unfortunately does not always clearly
'
:I
794
THE LAND
indicate their status. On the lands which he held in the territory
of Portus he had seven free coloni (with three women) and one
slave. On his other estates, he mentions numerous pe.rsons whom
he either frees or leaves to his heirs, but he rarely spectfies whether
they were coloni or slaves, and by this date coloni like slaves might
be bequeathed with the or The general
impression given by the willts of a rruxed servtle and free popula-
tion with the latter predominating. 5
3
On such tenuous data it is scarcely possible to generalise, but
there is no evidence for the extensive use of slave labour except in
Italy and Spain. The strong and successful protest of the Roman
senate in 397 against the levy of recruits from their lands suggests
that even in Italy great estates were for the most part cultivated
by free coloni, who were alone liable to the normal conscription.
There was at the same time a levy of slaves for the army, but these
were taken from the senators' town houses.
54
What is abundantly clear from the Codes is that agricultural
slavery was in general hereditary. It was probably in the main a
survival from earlier times, when slaves had been very c!Jeap,
and many landlords, especially in Italy, had found it convenient
and economic to stock their estates with slave labour. By the
second century A. D. the price of slaves had risen so greatly that most
landlords preferred to divide up their estates and lease them to
free tenants; but some owners of large estates had maintained
their stock of slaves by breeding. 55
In the later empire the supply of slaves became somewhat
more abundant, and their price correspondingly lower; but they
still remained as a rule too scarce and too dear to be employed for
agricultural work. On rare occasions when great numbers of
barbarian prisoners were thrown on the market, slaves could be
bought at bargain prices; after the defeat of Radagaesus his
followers were sold off at a solidus apiece. But more often the
government, when it made a large haul of barbarian prisoners,
preferred not to sell them as slaves, but to distribute them to
landlords as coloni, thus making them and their descendants
eligible for conscription into the army. A Gallic panegyrist of
the Caesar Constantius alludes to this practice in vague terms in
297. A constitution of Theodosius II, dated 409, gives details.
The captured tribe of the Scyrae were to be distributed to landlords
iure colonatus; they were not to be converted into slaves by the
grantees, or removed from agricultural employment, but were to be
permanently attached to their lands: the grantees had a period of
five years' grace to make the permanent settlement, within which
they could transfer them from one estate to another within the
.L

COLON/
795
same province, and during that period the new coloni were not
liable to conscription. 5
6
We rarely hear of slaves being bought for. agricultural use .. A
law envisages purchasers or of estates restockmg
them with slave labour; but this ts an exceptional. case. When the
peasants of Italy starving. the pr.efect of the ctty the
senators to subscnbe for famme relief by an appeal to thetr self-
interest: 'Do you not see that if these men die we shall have to buy
others? How much cheaper it is to feed a than to buy
one! Whence will you make up the loss? Whence wlll you find the
replacements ?'
57
.
The status of agricultural slaves gradually approXImated by law
and custom to that of serfs. Slaves registered in the census might
not be removed from agricultural employment. Constantine
allowed them to be sold to other landowners in the same province,
but V alentinian I forbade their sale apart from the land which they
cultivated. In Italy Theoderic rescinded this rul.e, but with this
exception it was maintained throughout the emptre. Slaves were
probably not used as mere but assigned lots of t?
cultivate at a rent, as what the classtcal .lawyers called quast colom:
Pope Pelagius, instructing an agent which slaves to out of
an inheritance part of which had to the c?urch, he
should pick 'men who can mamtam or cultivate holdmgs , and
threatens him with his anger if he lets go any 'countrymen who can
be conductores or coloni'.
58
Agricultural slaves married not only slave women but
of free tenants and of peasant proprietors, and reared families.
They were commonly to .acqu_ire property of the.ir own
(peculia) and to transmit tt to thetr children: when Amphatus, a
slave oE' the Roman church, made a will, Pope Gelasius, though he
quashed it on the ground that a peculium was legally vested
in the church, only ordered that f:is estate be handed over to
his sons. An even stranger case ts that of Celennus, son of a slave
woman of the Roman church, who 'to escape his proper state of
servitude dared to take to himself the name of a curialis'. He was
alleged to have retained possession of a piece of land to
his first wife a colona of the church, to have deserted his second
wife, a slave the church, and to have in his peculium much other
property, all of which Pope Pelagius ordered to be restored to the
Massa Tarpeiana, to which he belonged. 5
9
While agricultural slaves rose to the status of serfs, free tenants
T
796 THE LAND
gradually sank to a similar status. In the Principate tenants of
farms (coloni) and of houses (inquilini) were free to leave when their
leases expired. Under Roman law leases were normally for a term
of five years (lustrum), and could be continued as an annual tenancy
by the tacit consent of both parties. In some parts of the empire,
as in Egypt, short tenancies were usual: in others they were in
practice lifelong and hereditary. The latter custom was probably
commonest on large estates: under Commodus the tenants of
imperial lands in Mrica speak of themselves as having been born
and bred on the estates, and in the early third century imperial
tenants in Lydia threaten 'to leave the hearths of our fathers and the
tombs of our ancestors' unless their grievances are redressed.
Their words show that they were legally free to leave, though long
established on their farms and reluctant to abandon them.
60
The liberty of tenants was probably first restricted by the census
ofDiocletian, in which every peasant was registered in his village or
under his landlord's name on the farm that he cultivated, and by
legislation which, for fiscal motives, tied the peasantry to their
place of registration, where they paid their capitatio and annona.
But while the rule was introduced in the interests of the state, to
facilitate the collection of the capitatio and to ensure that the land
was cultivated and produced its annona, it proved very convenient
to landowners, who were short of agricultural labour and welcomed
a rule which prevented their tenants from abandoning their farms.
It was the interests of landlords, who were after all by and large
identical with the official aristocracy who controlled governmental
policy, which prevailed.61
Originally the whole agricultural population had been tied,
freeholders as well as tenants, but landlords had no interest in
tying freeholders to their villages, and the rule ceased to be
enforced against them save inter.mittently, as when in the general
settlement of Egypt in 415 not only co/oni but vicani were restored
to their owners and villages respectively. On the other hand the
rights of landlords over their coloni were progressively increased.
Constantine in 3 3 2 allowed landowners to chain coloni who were
suspected of planning to abscond; in 365 coloni were forbidden to
alienate their own property without their lord's consent; a few
years later it was enacted that landlords (or their agents), and not the
public collectors, should levy the taxes of coloni registered on
their estates; in 396 such coloni were debarred from suing their
lords except for extracting more than the customary rent.
62
Moreover the tied tenancy was preserved even when its original
raison d' etre, the capitatio, was abolished. When Valentinian re-
mitted the capitatio in Illyricum, he ruled that coloni might not

COLON/
797
therefore have freedom of movement but must continue to serve
their lords 'non tributario nexu sed nomine et titulo colonorum'
and Theodosius, when he extended the remission to Thrace'
similarly ruled that the coloni, though free from the capitatio 'shall
be bound by the rule of origin, and though they appear to be free-
born by condition, shall nevertheless be considered as slaves of the
land itself to which they are born, and shall have no right of going
off where they like or of changing their place, but that the land-
owner shall enjoy his right over them with the care of a patron and
the power of a master'. 63 .
Not all coloni throughout the empire were thus tied. Theodosius
wrote: 'whereas in other provinces which are subject to the rule of
our serenity a law instituted by our ancestors holds tenants down
by a kind of eternal right, so that they are not allowed to leave the
places by whose crops they are nurtured or desert the fields which
they have once undertaken to cultivate, but the landlords of Pales-
tine do not enjoy this advantage: we ordain that in Palestine also
no tenant whatever be free to wander at his own choice, but as in
other provinces be tied to the owner of the farm'. A clue to this
anomaly is supplied by a law addressed in 399 to the praetorian
prefect of Gaul, which orders that in those provinces 'in which this
method of tying the commons by registration is observed', land-
lords are to be liable for the public obligations. of commoners
registered on their estates. It would appear that in some provinces
of the Gallic prefecture the rural population was not registered
u?-der the estates of ~ h they_ w_ere tenants, but presumably by
v1llages or other local c1rcumscnpt1ons. In these provinces tenants
were probably not tied to their landlords, since registration was the
basis of the tied colonate. A similar system of registration may ex-
plain the anomalous position in Palestine. In Egypt also, where
registration was by villages, there is no trace of the colonate in the
papyri in the fourth century; it must have been introduced by the
early fifth century (for which the papyrological evidence is weak), for
the law of 41 5 orders the restoration of vagrantcoloni to their masters. 64
These large gaps in the colonate system were filled by imperial
legislation. But in all provinces there were tenants who were not
tied to their landlord. A tenant was registered under his landlord's
name oniy if he possessed no land of his own; if he owned even a
tiny plot he was registered in his village. On massae and large fundi
which were villages in themselves the tenants would normally be
landless men and therefore entered on the census under their
fundus. But landlords, as we have seen, also owned many small
farms and even plots, and these would often be rented by neigh-
bouring peasant proprietors, many of whom owned tiny plots too
THE LAND
small to support a family. Such tenants, being registered in their
villages, were not legally bound to their landlords. The distinction
between tied and free coloni would roughly have corresponded to
resident and non-resident tenants, for any non-resident tenant
would probably own at least a house and garden of his own.
Great landlords, who owned large estates, would tend to have tied
tenants, lesser landlords, whose holdings were small and scattered,
would have free tenants. 65
Free tenancies also arose in another way. In the. original census
tenants had been entered by name with their wives (in areas where
women were taxed) and their children, including those under
taxable age, all with their ages. The idea behind this procedure
was that, as the existing taxpayers died or reached the age which
gave them immunity, the children would automatically move up
into the tax-paying group as they reached the statutory age: the
registration and the consequent attachment to the farm was from
the beginning assumed to be hereditary. For the system to function
properly the census should have been repeated at fixed intervals, but
in fact this was not done. From time to time a city or a landowner
would ask for a special reassessment, in order to justify a demand
for lower taxes, and a censitor or peraequator would be appointed ad
hoc, but normally the government based its tax demands on the
total recorded in the old census. If coloni absconded, the landlord
was expected to reclaim them and recover arrears of tax from
whoever had harboured them: he remained liable for the full
number of tenants registered on his land. If coloni were conscripted,
he had if possible to make up the deficit from the younger
generation, the adcrescentes as they were called, and could claim a
rebate only if he had none of working age. On the other hand,
if he increased his total by taking on a tenant from outside, he no
doubt did not add this man to the list.66
In practice the registered coloni on an estate were thus a hereditary
group comprising only the descendants of the coloni recorded in the
original census. When the group increased the landlord was
probably not particular to retain them all, for he wanted only
enough men to cultivate his land efficiently; so long as each eo/onus
left one son to succeed him, he would be satisfied, and other sons
would move elsewhere. But where the group dwindled, the land-
lord would take on outsiders, and ask no questions. They might
be runaway coloni from other farms, sons of a neighbour's coloni,
peasant proprietors who had abandoned their village, or even
townspeople who could no longer make a living by their craft or
trade. Such men, who had no hereditary connection with the
estate, were not tied to it.67

COLON!
799
With the lapse of time, as on one estate or another the descend-
ants of the original coloni fell below the number required and were
supplemented by outsiders, free coloni became a more and more
substantial class, especially on the estates of the lesser landowners:
for great landlords could transfer surplus coloni from one part of
their estates to another where there was a shortage. As free
coloni became more important, the laws began to make a distinction
between them and the tied coloni. Down to the third quarter of the
fourth century, the imperial constitutions nearly always speak of
coloni without qualification. They then begin to qualify tied
coloni by some additional word or phrase. Their terminology is,
at first in particular, varied and confused. In the West the word
tributarius is sometimes used, to denote a eo/onus for whose taxes the
landlord is liable. The term inquilinus is also not infrequently used,
but is apparently not synonymous with eo/onus, probably denoting
a man domiciled on an estate but not a lessee ofland, a cottager who
worked as a labourer or craftsman: but, to quote a law of 396,
'though there is a distinction in name between inquilini and coloni,
as far as matters for claiming their origo their condition appears to
be indistinguishable and almost identical'. More commonly tied
coloni are styled originales or originarii, as being bound by their origo to
the land.
The Eastern chancery preferred to stress registration on the
census, using such phrases as censibus adscripti, and eventually
coining the word adscripticius: the word, in its Greek form bvn6-
yeag;O<;, was first to our knowledge used by the emperor Marcian,
addressing the Council of Chalcedon, and first appears in the Code
in a law of Leo dated 466: it was never used in the West. The two
terms originalis and adscripticius merely express different aspects of
the same situation, for the census registered a man where he
belonged by birth. Both conceptions are sometimes combined in
a single sentence: a law ofValens speaks of'coloni originales who are
registered in the same places', and in a law of Valentinian I coloni
and inquilini are ordered to return 'to their old homes where they
are registered and were born and bred'. 68
In 419 Honorius applied the rules of longi temporis praescriptio to
the benefit of originales and inquilini. Men of this status who had
left their land for thirty years and had not been reclaimed became
free; women became free after twenty years, and even if reclaimed
within this period, might compensate their former master with a
substitute. In 449 Valentinian Ill extended the benefit of this law to
originales of imperial lands; normally there was no prescription
against the rights of the crown. The reason given is an interesting
one; high ranking palatine officials had been reclaimed by landlords
!
,,
8oo THE LAND
on the ground that their grandfathers or great-grandfathers had
been their coloni. 69
Two years later Valentinian Ill found that his generosity was
being abused by coloni who fled from their own landlord and leased
a farm from another, pretending to be free men, and after thirty
years had their freedom legally confirmed. Worse still, some
runaway coloni moved from landlord to landlord, until the thirty
years were up. He accordingly ruled that an originarius who broke
his tie with his own lord by thirty years' absence became the
originarius of his new landlord or of the last of them, if he had kept
on the move. Valentinian also noted with indignation that a free
man would take a holding and marry an originaria, and then move
on, abandoning his wife. He ruled that a stranger wishing to marry
an originaria J?USt a declarat.ion that he would stay perman-
ently and while remammg otherwise free should be bound by this
declaration.
70
In the Western parts an originarius could thus legally shake off
his condition only by leaving the land and pursuing some urban
occupation for thirty years: as long as he stayed on the land he
remained an originarius, even if he moved to another estate. On
the other hand no free man could become an originarius: even if he
married an originaria and settled on her estate, he retained his
personal freedom. It is unlikely that in either case the law was
strictly observed. Many originarii who left their homes no doubt
to conceal. their status. On the other hand free peasants,
according to Salvian, often voluntarily declared themselves
inquilini or acquired the status by prescription. 71
In the Eastern parts Honorius' law of 419 was promulgated in
the Theodosian Code, but Valentinian III's subsequent legislation
was not. Here therefore the rule of thirty years' prescription
worked in favour of adscripticii. Anastasius applied the rule in the
opposite direction, enacting that a free man who leased a farm for
thirty years thereby tied himself for life, but remained otherwise
free, not subject to the disabilities of adscripticii. Justinian in-
terpreted this law as binding the sons of such a tenant, even if they
had not lived thirty years on the estate. Justinian also limited and
abolis}:Ied the right of the adscriptt(ius to free himself by
thirty years absence. In 53 r he ruled that if the son of an adscripti-
cius was ::tllowed by his landlord to absent himself because during
the father's lifetime he had no need of his services, and should
complete thirty years' absence, he could nevertheless be recalled on
his father's death. A year or two later he enacted that the condition
of an adscripticius was imprescriptable. 72
In one respect Justinian relaxed the law. Hitherto children of

COLONl' 8or
free persons and adscripticii had all been adscripticii, whether it was
their father or their mother that was free. Justinian, regarding
adscripticii as virtually slaves, was shocked by this breach of the
principle of Roman law which declared that the offspring of a free
woman was free, and ruled that if an adscripticius married a free
woman their children should be free; at the same time he prohibited
such marriages and allowed landlords to prevent them. The law
caused loud and prolonged protest. Justinian had first to explain
that it was not retrospective, and children born of such marriages
before its enactment could not claim freedom. Dominicus, the
praetorian prefect of Illyricum, forwarded protests from the land-
lords of his prefecture that their estates were being deserted and
that they could not pay their taxes. Justinian accordingly inter-
preted his law as meaning that children of such mixed marriages,
while being free, remained co!oni, and were therefore under
Anastasius' law bound by a hereditary tie to their farms. This
ruling was promulgated in Illyricum only, but under Justin II
the landlords of Africa, through the praetorian prefect of Africa,
Theodore, protested that their estates lay desolate owing to the
operation of the law, and successfully petitioned that the ruling
promulgated in the Illyrican prefecture might be applied to Africa.
When J ustin was succeeded by Tiberius Constantine the landlords
of Africa, headed by the bishop of Carthage, anxiously pressed for
confirmation of Justin's ruling.7
3
In the sixth century tenants thus fell into three classes. First
there were the adscripticii, a hereditary class descended in the main
from tenants who had been registered in Diocletian's census as
belonging to an estate; in some provinces, such as Palestine and
Egypt, where the tied colonate was of more recent origin, they were
descended from men who had been tenants when the relevant laws
were promulgated. In Egypt they are rarely found even in the
sixth century: they are chiefly recorded on the A pion estates, but
two are known who belonged to the church of Oxyrhynchus.
They are confined to the old consolidated estates ( br:of><ta or
><n),ua-ra) and are not found on scattered parcels held in the villages. 7
4
Adscripticii were serfs, scarcely distinguishable from agricultural
slaves; as Justinian frankly says: 'What difference can be understood
between slaves and adscripticii, when both are placed in their
master's power and he can manumit a slave with his peculium and
alienate an adscripticius with the land?' The status of the two
classes had become in fact extraordinarily similar. Slaves were
never eligible for military service, but from the early fifth century
neither were coloni adscripticii. Slaves could not legally own
property, but in practice were allowed to enjoy their peculia and
8oz
THE LAND
leave them to their children: coloni from 365 were forbidden to
alienate their property without their landlord's consent. An
owner had always been liable for the tax of his slaves: in 3 71
landlords were made responsible for collecting the taxes on their .
coloni originales. A slave could not bring a legal action: coloni were
in 396 debarred from suing their landlords, except for exacting
from them more than the customary rent. Slaves could not be
ordained without their master's consent: in 409 this rule was
applied to coloni. The Council of Chalcedon forbade slaves to be
received into monasteries without their owners' consent; in 45 z
Valentinian III enacted the same rule for both slaves and coloni,
and in 484 Zeno extended the ban on slaves to adscripticii in the
East. Coloni were tied to their holdings. Slaves registered in the
census could only be sold with the land. 75
Next came coloni who were tied hereditarily to the land but per-
sonally free: that is, they could sue their landlords, alienate their
own property as they wished, enlist in the army and take holy
orders or enter a monastery without their landlord's permission.
They could even, if they acquired land of their own, which de-
manded all their time and was sufficient to maintain them, throw up
their tenancies. These were, or were descended from, men who
had leased holdings and settled down on them for over thirty
years; they would have been of diverse origin, some descended
from peasant freeholders, some from coloni, particularly younger
sons whom landlords had not wished to retain. After Justinian's
law this class was swelled by the sons of adscripticii who had married
free peasant women.
7
6
Lastly there were free men who took short leases and thus
retained their freedom of movement. This class is almost ignored
in the laws, but the papyri prove that in Egypt at any rate it was
still in the sixth century important. We possess over qo datable
leases or fragments of leases, ranging from Diocletian's reign to
the Arab conquest, and in over ninety the term of the lease is
preserved. Apart from half a dozen life or emphyteutic leases the
great majority (some sixty) are for very short terms, not exceeding
seven years and commonly for one year only. In the remainder
(some twenty-five) the tenant leases the land 'for as long a period as
you wish', that is takes up a yearly tenancy renewable by the consent
of both parties: this form of lease is first recorded at the very end
of the fo:ltth .and becomes increasingly common. The
chronolog1cal d1stnbut1on ?f the documents is erratic, being
largely governed by the accident of survival: of the total datable
over fifty are of the late third and the fourth centuries over a
hundred of the sixth and early seventh, but only about t;n of the

RENTS AND SERVICES 803
fifth. The figures are not therefore a reliable guide to the number
of short-term tenants at any time, but strongly suggest that the
class did not in the sixth century. In the fourth century, so
far as we can judge by the documents, all landlords let their lands on
short leases, which were no doubt often renewed. In the fifth
automatically renewable yearly tenancies began to come into vogue,
but never outnumbered short leases.
77
It is impossible to estimate the relative importance of these three
classes of tenant. Egypt, where the accumulation of great estates
late and there was a stro_ngly 7stablished class of peasant
propr1etors, was perhaps exceptlonal m the small number of its
adscripticii and the preponderance of free short-term tenants.
In areas like Italy or Mrica, where vast massae with their villages of
coloni were already established in Diocletian's time originales or
inqui(in_i have b.een a group. But the caused by
JustJman s law on mJXed marnages shows that even in Africa there
must have been a large number of free peasant women, daughters
of free coloni or peasant proprietors, living on or near the great
estates. On: may suspect !hat even here adscripticii, who were a
closed heredi.tary caste, subject to leakage, licit or illicit,
and rarely remforced by new recru1ts, were a dwindling class.
The Codes, much though they tell us of the legal status of coloni
are not very informative about their conditions of work and life:
Their rer:t take three .forms, a money payment, a fixed
m kind, o! a proportion of the crop: mixed rents, partly
m kind and partly m money, or of a proportion of the main crop
with supplementary payments in cash or kind, are also known. In
the money rents were normal, though
Pliny expenmented w1th the share cropping system. In Mrica on
the other hand share cropping seems to have been usual. In Egypt
rents were usually paid as a fixed quantity in kind, though money
rents were quite common, especially for vineyards and orchards. 78
The. sa;ne kind regional variation prevailed in the later empire,
and w1thin any reg10n there was no fixed practice. A constitution
addressed in 366 to the governor of Tripolitania enacts that 'owners
of estates shall accept what the land produces and not demand
money which the peasants do not dare to hope for, unless the
cust'?m of this'; but though this may have
applied to Tnpohtarua, lt d1d not to Egypt. Here of the surviving
about a third J?rovide for a. r.ent in money, a quarter are
partiary, and the rest m fixed quantities of produce: no noticeable
THE LAND
change takes place from Diocletian down to the Arab cor:quest,
except that in the sixth century it is common to add th.e mam
sundry perquisites in kind-cheeses, a basket of a of wme,.
a sucking pig or the like. The tenants of the Ap1?n family
paid in wine on vineyards, and on arable partly m gold; partly m
wheat. Justinian, laying down rules for of the
rent when a eo/onus challenged his landlord s t1tle, makes elaborate
provision for payment in money or kind or both.
79

In Italy and Sicily gold rents seem to have been usual m the sl:cth
century. Gregory the Great, wishing to encourage the conversion
of Jewish coloni of the church, ordered that the rents of converts
should be reduced, and suggested that the be on
the scale of one tremissis on a rent of one solidus, or one solldus on
a rent of three or four. On another occasion he ordered a holding
normally leased for r! solidi to be granted to a m<;lllast.ery .f<?r one
tremissis. It is significant that when corn was required m S1cily for
shipment to Rome, it was bought from the co!oni: Gregory <;>rdered
that on such occasions the agents must pay the market pnce and
not fix an arbitrary valuation. On one occasion he the
rector of the Sicilian patrimony to spend 50 lb. gold on buymg
from outsiders; the rector had this substantial sum of money m
hand, drawn presumably from rents, but no corn.
80

Among the .Ravenna papyri are pres.erved
portions of detailed rentals of two fundz m the temtory ofPatavmm,
dating from the The pay money
ranging from 8 solldl 8. s1llquae to 3 solld1 3 sill quae. They 1n
addition, like many Egyptian tenants, what are styled xema or
presents in kind, on one estate pork(from r6o to 8o lb.),geese (two),
hens (from r6 to 6) and eggs (ten per hen), on the other geese,
hens and eggs on the same ar;d honey (from r ?? 70
These xenia are apparently 1dent1cal w1th excepta et vt!zc:Ita
Gregory mentions as an extra .charge his
coloni and the excepta praedtorum szve accesstones which Pope Fellx
allotted in their entirety to the bishop of Ravenna 'on account of
the expenses of his household and the !?resents which o!fered to
various persons and the banquets whrch he has to gtve for
the honour and dignity of his position or for the receptwn of
visitors.'
81
Besides these minor perquisites most great landlords seem to
taken some proportion of their rents in the staple crops. Accordrng
to Olympiodorus Roman senato!s. drew abou.t of
their rents in gold, and the remammg quarter 1n wheat,
oil. Lauricius, in his letters to his actores and conductores m S!c1ly,
deals only with money, but he gives instructions to his procurator

RENTS AND SERVICES
to despatch the produce in kind (species) to Ravenna or Rome.
From many stories of famines it is evident that great landlords held
considerable stocks of corn, not only in Rome, but in Antioch,
Caesarea and other cities, and these stocks they probably derived
from rents in kind.s2
A constitution of V alens directs that owners of estates should
personally or through their actores collect the taxes due in respect
of their coloni originales, but that other coloni who owned land of their
own and were registered in their own place should pay their taxes
direct to the ordinary collector. The second part of the law does
not seem to have been mandatory. Egyptian leases frequently
contain a clause specifying that all taxes and levies shall fall upon
the owner, and Justinian, while regarding it as normal for a free
eo/onus to pay his own taxes and get a receipt in his own name,
provides for the case where the landlord pays the taxes out of the
rent and has the receipt made out to him. The Apion family paid
all taxes on their estate, whether the land was cultivated by adscrip-
ticii or free tenants.
83
Whether coloni normally owed labour services as well as rent is
an obscure question. Under the Principate tenants of the great
African estates performed labour services on the home farm; the
amount varied from six operae (presumably days' work) in the year,
two in the ploughing season, two in the hoeing and two in the
harvest, to twelve, and was a frequent of dispute between
the coloni and the conductor. The Codes contam no dear reference
to the system. John Chrysostom appears to allude to it in his
diatribe against Antiochene landlords who 'impose and
intolerable payments on them (the peasants) and reqmre of them
laborious services. . . . What sight could be more pitiable than
when, having toiled the whole winter through in frost and rain,
spent with the return with hands and even
in debt, dreadmg and fearmg more than th1s rum and more than
hunger the torments inflicted by the bailiffs, the seizures, the de-
mand notes, the arrests, the inescapable forced labour.'
84
For sixth-century Italy one of the Ravennate rent rolls mentioned
above gives more detail. The column containing the descriptions
of the holdings and the names of their occupiers is unfortunately
missing. The columns containing the rents and xenia show one
large holding (rent 13 solidi 13 siliquae) followed by six others with
smaller rents, one at 8 solidi 8 siliquae, the rest at 3 or 4 These six
smaller holdings also pay weekly work (pro ebdomada operae ), one,
two and three operae (presumably a day's work) per week each, in
all thirteen operae. It is clear that the first holding is the home farm,
worked by the vilicus with the aid of labour services from the coloni.
8o6 '!'HE LAND
The vilicus would have had two men assisting him every day of the
week save one, the coloni, if each colonica was held by several coloni,
as on the Saltus Erudianus, would have had to give about one day
a week to work on the home farm, a heavy labour service.
85
On the Saltus Erudianus on the other hand no opcrac are recorded,
and the vilicus pays one of the lowest rents on the fundus. The
explanation probably is that the greater part of the original home
farm had been let off as a co!onica, and the vilicus cultivated the
remainder by himseif. 86
This evidence is a small basis for estimating the importance of
opcrac in the colonate, but they suggest that the institution was
relatively rare. A system of opcrac would be applicable only to a
large fundus, with a big home farm and a good number of colonicac,
and then only if the home farm were not stocked with slave labour.
It was probably only on fundi where there was a villa where the
landlord resided, or had once resided, that there was a home farm
to supply his household needs. On many fundi the whole area had
no doubt from the beginning been divided into colonicac, and on
many more the home farms were later let off in colonicac when they
passed into the hands of absentee owners. It is dangerous to
argue from silence, but it is significant that among the many
abuses which Pope Gregory found to correct on the patrimony
of Peter, no mention is made of any connected with labour services,
normally a constant source of complaint where they exist. It is also
significant that in the abundant documents of the A pion estates-
and indeed in the papyri generally-there is no reference to labour
services; the agents of the A pion family always deal with rent
paying tenants or groups of tenants, and pay wages to any labour
that they employ for building or repairs on the estate. 8
7
.
In addition to their rent (with perquisites), their taxes, and labour
services, if any, coloni were subject to many minor but vexatious ex-
actions from the landlord, or more frequently his agents. When
rents and taxes were collected in money a surcharge was made,
nominally to compensate for light weight coins. Gregory found that
on the estates of the church 73t solidi were reckoned to the pound
instead of 72, a smcharge of half a carat on every solidus: on the
A pion estates t carat per solidus was the rate. Where corn was being
measured either for rent and taxes in kind, or for purchase by the
estate, a large 'receipt measure' was used. Gregory found that
modii of 2 5 (instead of I 6) scxtarii were in use, and forbade any
larger than I8 to be employed. On the Apion estates Serenus the
agent agreed to pay his employers I 5 artabac extra on every I oo in
view of the advantage gained by the estate's 'receipt measures'.
On the estates of the church, when corn was bought from the

RENTS AND SERVICES
coloni by the agents, they fixed an arbitrarily low price. Coloni on
the patrimony of Peter paid substantial fees (Gregory limited them
to one solidus) for marriage licences, on what precise legal ground
is not known., but presumably they found it worth while to cover
themselves against eventual vexatious claims on the ground that
they had married outsiders or slaves. In one way or another agents
evidently counted on making considerable profits on the side:
Serenus the deacon would hardly have paid the Apion estate twelve
solidi for one year's appointment as subagent (neov<]>'lj<;) if he had
expected to gain only the salary of a subagent, 2 solidi and 24
artabac of wheat (equivalent to another z! solidi).
88
In 325 Constantine enacted that a eo/onus, if his landlord exacted
'more than had been the previous custom, and than had been
exacted in earlier times', might apply to any judge, and if he proved
his case, the rent would be restored to the old level, and any over-
payment refunded. This right of action was expressly preserved for
coloni adscripticii in 396, and Constantine's law was republished in
Justinian's Code. No such rule can have been in force during the
inflationary period of the third and early fourth centuries; for
agricultural rents, if payable in denari,i, would in that case have
become nominal. By 32 5 most rents, if not in kind, must have been
reckoned in gold. The rule presumably applied only to a sitting
tenant: it certainly did not affect short-term leases such as are
recorded in the Egyptian papyri. It was probably not a very
effective protection even for the tied eo/onus. It is rather a suspicious
circumstance that in one of the Ravennate rent rolls the rents ate
all multiples of one solidus plus one siliqua: it looks as if these
rents had all been raised by a siliqua in the solidus. Moreover on
two holdings an extra 20 siliquae has been inserted in smaller
letters between 3 solidi and 3 siliqttae. It is however probable
that by and large the rents of tied coloni remained at the customary
figure, and that landlords made what extra profit they could by
extorting perquisites, using special 'receipt measures' and the
other similar devices already described.
89
For the level of rents we have no evidence except from Egypt.
There in share cropping leases the division is almost always half
and half on arable, the owner paying the taxes, but sometimes
getting some extra perquisites. On vineyards and orchards the
owner's share is usually two-thirds, sometimes three-quarters. In
leases of arable where the rent is payable in kind, a normal tent
is five artabae to the arura (taxes on the owner): there survive
six leases at this figure, one at seven, two at six, and two at four.
This is evidently for good average land; there are half a dozen
leases at much lower figures, ranging from 2! to I artabae. Five
8o8 THE LAND
artabae as we have seen is probably roughly equivalent to half
the crop. As wheat normally sold at 10 artabae to the solidus these
figures imply a gold rent of about half a solidus per arura. Very
few leases survive in which the relevant figures are preserved,
and they vary considerably: there are two of slightly over half a
solidus (13 and 13! carats), two of rather under (about 9! carats),
one of as much as 19! carats (equivalent to 8 artabae) and one at as
little as 3 i carats. 9o
In these leases the landlord usually does nothing for his tenant
but merely draws the rent. The Apion fanilly on the other hand
were progressive landlords, who spent a lot of money on equipping
and maintaining their farms, particularly in building cisterns and
supplying irrigation machinery and oxen to work it. They ex-
pected very much higher rents. From one document it appears
that on one estate they demanded one solidus an arura for arable
and three solidi an arura for vineyard. These figures seem very
exorbitant even if the co!oni had all their equipment and seed
provided free and contributed only their labour, and in fact the
tenants concerned did object, and refused to work the land except
on a flat rate of one solidus for arable and vineyard alike. As we
calillot calculate their overheads, we calillot tell how much the
A pions got net per arura, but probably well over the half solidus
with which the ordinary landlord was content.
91
In other parts of the empire rents of arable land must have been
substantially lower. In many areas the yield per acre sown was
lower, and almost everywhere only half the area could be used
each year for growing corn, and the other half lay fallow or yielded
only a lighter or less valuable crop. In terms of labour also many
more hours of work were required to cultivate the same area by the
farming technique practised in other Mediterranean lands. On
vineyards and olive yards on the other hand the yield would have
been as good in other Mediterranean lands as in Egypt, and the
quality and price of the crops in many cases better. On imperial
estates in Africa in the second century the tenants usually paid one-
third of all crops alike, corn, wine or olives: this flat rate may have
been intended to encourage tenants to adopt the more profitable
types of cultivation. On these figures the rent of a mixed farm in
Mrica, one-third of all the produce, would have been about half
that of a comparable farm in Egypt, where vineyards and orchards
paid two-thirds or three-quarters, and arable half.
It would be unwise to generalise on the condition of the peasantry

THE CONDITION OF THE PEASANTRY 809
under the later Roman empire. The kulak was not unknown, not
only among free peasants but also among co!oni and among
agricultural . slaves. A good example of an enterpnsmg ar:d
prosperous peasant proprietor is Aurelius Sacaon of
many of whose papers have come down to us. He owned a fru!-
sized holding, more than zo arurae, and leased land m
addition; in 33 I he was renting 16 arurae _from Al;lrelia Rufina, a
lady of senatorial rank who owned land m the He also
went in for stock farming. In 306 he leased a considerable flock
( 62 sheep, I 3 rams and 59 goats) from two civil servan!s; the
agreement was for five J:ears and was Ofl: a mitt!fage basis. He
eventually in this way bmlt up a flock of h1s owll:: m 342 he c_om-
plained of the theft of 82 of h1s sheep. Some eo font of the res prtvata
could afford to buy not only their own holdings but those of their
neighbours; the emperor directed that in such a case the land
should be sold to the co!oni jointly, to prevent the rich eo/onus
from exploiting the others. Celerinus and Ampliatus, the slaves of
the Roman church, one of whom accumulated enough land to
pose as a decurion, while the other rose to be a conductor, have
already been mentioned. Peter, an origina!is of a mass a of the Roman
see, was appointed a defensor of that church.
92
The legal restrictions on the peasants' freedom must not be
exaggerated. de facto enj_oyed full liberty, and so also
did free tenants. T1ed co!ont could m the fourth century legally
escape from their cot;dition only by joining _or being conscripted
into the army, and m the fifth. this was
stopped. In spite of the legal pos1t10n, however, 1t IS frurly evident
that many sons of adscripticii did, either _with the landlord's c-;m-
nivance or by stealth, make their mto walk of life,
and some did very well. Theodosms II found lt necessary to
instruct his magistri mi!itum not to acJ.n:it censibus, adscript! t'? their
ojjicia, and V alentinian III allowed th1rty years . t?
extinguish even the claims of the cro'Yn because h1gh civil
servants were being blackmailed as bemg descended from ortgtna!es.
The church also offered an avenue of escape. Adscripticii and
slaves could not, it is true, be ordained without their lord's consent,
but such consent was often given for them to serve the_ local
church of the estate. Most slaves and adscripticii no doubt d1d not
rise above the position of rural parish priests, but some _have
found promotion; Justinian ruled that the episcopacy extmgmshed
adscriptician or servile status.
93
Apart from the lucky few who affi1:1ence as farmers or
broke their bonds and rose to good posltlons m church and state
there must have been many who lived not too uncomfortably.
Sro THE LAND
The co!oni of the Saltus Erudianus and its unnamed neighbour
evidently kept pigs, geese, fowls and bees on a fair scale, and must
have enjoyed a reasonably varied diet. Many of the co!oni of the
Roman church in Sicily apparently owned more valuable stock;
for Gregory, having succeeded in recovering from the conductores
sums illegally extorted from the co!oni, ordered Peter, the rector,
to use the money in buying cows, sheep and pigs and distributing
them to the poor and indigent co!oni in each massa, of whom he was
to draw up a list. We know of co!oni prosperous enough to own
slaves of their own; bishop Remigius inherited one from one of
his originarii and another from his swineherd. 94
But taken as a whole the peasantry were an oppressed and hapless
class. Enough has been said already of the many ways in which they
were exploited by the tax collector, if they were freeholders, and by
the landlord's agent if they were tenants. In times of shortage it
was they who were the first to suffer. It is significant that on a
number of occasions we hear of peasants in a period of bad harvests
flocking to the towns to beg for bread. Ambrose comments
bittt;rly on the expulsion of non-residents from Rome during
fammes, and tells how one enlightened prefect of the city refused
to take this step, protesting to the wealthy aristocrats: 'if so many
cultivators are starved and so many farmers die, our corn supply
will be ruined for good: we are excluding those who normally
supply our daily bread'. Eventually his arguments prevailed, a
fund was raised and corn bought for distribution. Libanius tells us
of a similar situation at Antioch iu 3 84. 'Famine had filled our
city with beggars, some of whom had abandoned their fields, since
they had not even grass to eat, it being winter, and some had left
cities'. In case the consular of Syria, gave
relief from public funds, but Icanus, the comes Orientis, refused
Libanius' plea for additional help. 95
At Edessa in the third quarter of the fourth century there was
great famine and all the country folk were starving. Ephraim
Syrus begged the rich men of the town to subscribe, a fund was
raised, bread was distributed and an open-air hospital of 300
beds established in the colonnades of the streets for the bad
cases. In the early sixth century there was another famine at
Edessa, and once again the country people crowded into town.
Demosthenes, the governor of Osrhoene, went up to Constantin-
ople to ask for aid. Meanwhile his deputy, Eusebius, did what he
could by releasing grain from the public granaries, but the sufferers
had no money to buy the bread, and wandered about the streets
scavenging for scraps. At length Demosthenes returned with
funds, and distributed a pound of bread per day free to the destitute,
I
I
l
I
'
l
I
_k

THE CONDITION OF THE PEASANTRY 8II
to whom he issued leaden tickets. He als? walled in the colon-
cl d d d straw and mats on which the refugees could
n
1
a es and provl. e d hospital service. But despite his efforts there
s eep, an organ1se a . h ring and many died 96
was a severe outbreak of illness
1
1!- t e sp . .
Wh
1 1 significant m these stones 1s that at a time
at 1s partlcu ar Y . ilable
when the easants were reduced to eating v.:as ava
. h .. P 'th in the government grananes or m private hands.
IInf tht e hcltles, etl" ilerd the tax collector and the landlord extracted his
e arves 1a e , kind ll 't t
due and the peasant had to surrender his crop :n <;>r se I o
the necessary cash, even if he was left With nothing to feed
himself and his family. . fc Th
Such ruthless efficiency was achieved by use o 1or:-e. . eo-
claret tells a story of tax collectors descendmg on a Syr1an village
of easant roprietors, and when they protest t!;at they pay
th!roo soltdi demanded, them putting them m
h k
no comment on this routme procedure. Amm1anus
e ma es h f th E ti 'among them
remarks on the stubborn c o e gyp ans: . b d
a man is ashamed if he cannot display many on his. o y,
d b refusing his taxes' Resistance was futile, for behmd tax
earlnl e Y d landlord lay the armed force of the state. In 3 8 6
eo ector an f mill' i tan e to land
Libanius rotested against the grant o tary ass c -
P t th ir tenants 'some treat these too like slaves, and
owners agams e . d d p them a
if the do not approve of their extortionate eman s u on ?
few syllables are spoken and .a soldier the estate w1th
handluffs and the prison .them m chams . A century .later
1 dl r
ds were keepmg thett own bands of armed retamers
great an o . 97
(buce!larii) and had their own pnvate pnsons. . k' d f
On the whole the reaction of the peasantry to this m. o .treat-
ment was singularly passive. In Africa thert; wa.s for a time m. the
mid-fourth century a resistance movement, by Donat1sm,
which was widespread among the peasants, agamst landlords and
mane lenders (no doubt often the same perso;;s ), who tended !O
h li
Y. 'Wh n Axil a and Fasir were called leaders of the samts
cat o cs. e ' all d t be safe
b these madmen,' writes Optatus, no one .was owe o . .
his own estates, bonds for debt lost their force, no m

th d s had freedom to demand payment, everyone was tewfied
b
f!tters of those who boasted that they ":'ere the

Y. " ' In Augustine's day however, Donatlst co!om obediently
samts . .' h h 1 dl d 98
P
aid their rents to the cathohc w o elrd or s. d
Onl in Gaul, and later in Spam, are sustame an w1 esprea
easaJ revolts recorded, those of the so-calle4
word). The Bacaudae were already m D10clet1an s .r.e1gn
formidable enough to demand regular prolonged. mihtary
operations by Maximian for their suppressiOn, and their leaders
u
8!2 THE LAND
Aelianus and Amandus were considered important enough to be
called usurpers.
In the early fifth century (in 417, 435-7 and 442) there were
widespread revolts which had to be suppressed by full-scale
military operations. By the middle of the fifth century the move-
ment had spread to northern Spain, where two magistri
militum operated against the Bacaudae of Tarraconens1s 441 and
443, and in 454 the Roman employed the V1s1goths to
suppress them. Little enough IS known of the character of these
movements. Some were no doubt mere jacqueries, and the term
Bacaudae was applied to common brigandage, such as was no
doubt endemic in the Alpine passes and the Spanish highlands.
But in Armorica the movement was more organised. Not only
were the Roman officials expelled and landlords expropriated but
an army was created and courts of justice set up.
99
Elsewhere the oppressed peasantry had two resources only if
things became intolerable. They could run away and seek employ-
ment as coloni of some other landlord: or they could buy the support
of a powerful patron, a military officer who could employ the
armed forces of the state to protect them or a great landlord who
could likewise operate the state machine in his interests, or at a
pinch defy it with impunity. And in such cases the last state of
the peasant was usually worse than the first.
It is generally agreed that there was a decline in agriculture
in the later Roman empire, but little attempt has been made to
estimate how serious it was, and on its causes debate has been
inconclusive, whether it was due to the general exhaustion of the
soil, to shortage of agricultural manpower, or, as contemporaries
believed, partly to barbarian invasions and depredations but
predominantly to over-taxation.
That the area of land under cultivation shrank considerably
cannot be doubted. Abandoned lands (agri deserti) are a constant
theme of imperial legislation from before Diocletian's time to that
of Justinian. The problem first appears in the late second century,
when the emperor Pertinax issued an edict, inviting all and sundry
to cultivate deserted land, whether private or imperial property,
in Italy and the provinces, and promising them ten years' immunity
from taxes and full ownership. This may have been a temporary
crisis, due to the ravages of the great plague which began under
Marcus. In the late third century Aurelian decreed that the
councils of the cities were to be responsible for the taxes of deserted
lands in their territories. Constantine renewed this law, but

AGRI DESERT!
added that where the councils were not equal to the burden,
the tax obligations of abandoned land should be distributed to
estates and territories, immunity for three years being granted. lOO
The imperial government was evidently more concerned that
the taxes should be paid than that the land should be cultivated.
Its methods of achieving,this aim remained those employed by
Pertinax, Aurelian, and Constantine. The deserted lands might
be granted or sold or leased on favourable terms, including a firm
title and temporary immunity. They might be compulsorily
allocated, with their tax burden, to the governing body of the
community in whose territory they lay, which could in its turn
either try to get them cultivated or merely raise a supplementary
levy on the other landowners to pay the taxes due on them. Or
again they might be compulsorily allocated to individual landlords,
who made what they could out of them but were responsible for
the full tax. These methods could be combined in various ways,
and rather different rules were applied to state lands and private
lands, but the same general principles were followed throughout
the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The one thing which the
government was reluctant to do, though occasionally it was forced to
make this concession, was to write off deserted lands permanently.
The problem of imperial lands was administratively simpler ..
The government would offer emphyteutic or perpetual leases,
with a few years' initial immunity, insisting that grantees must
hold good land of their own to guarantee the rent: in 337 it was
enacted that anyone who bought the good private land of an
emphyteutic lessee of bad imperial land became responsible for the
emphyteutic lease. The emperors also frequently ruled that in
any lease, for a term of years or in perpetuity, bad lands must be
mixed with good, and that lessees must never be allowed to take
productive land only.
101
In the fourth century the government used private lands deserted
by their owners to provide allotments for veterans, and in 368
Valentinian gave a general licence to veterans to cultivate waste
lands, forbidding the owners to appear at harvest time and claim
agraticum. In the same year deserted lands in Italy were sold by
auction for what they would fetcll and other lands were granted
gratis to anyone who would take them, with three years' immunity.
In 3 86 the owners of deserted land were promised remission of
arrears and invited to return: if they failed to claim, the land was
granted to any applicant who was willing to pay the taxes. A few
years later the former owner was allowed to reclaim his land
within two years, provided that he indemnified the new occupant
for improvements. In 405 a less generous offer was made; the
THE LAND
old owners could reclaim their lands only if they paid the arrears,
and new applicants had to pay off the arrears by way of purchase
price. In 412 the government had to offer better terms .. Lands
which could not pay their full tax had their assessment reduced, and
the former owners or their heirs, or failing them willing neighbours
who reoccupied them, were given two years' inlmunity.1o2
The practice of allocating waste private lands, or the taxes due
for them, to the community is frequently attested in the papyri.
We possess the proceedings of a lawsuit, held in 340, between two
women who had abandoned their property and the villagers of
Caranis, where their land was situated. 'What could the praepositus
pagi do?' says counsel for the villagers. 'Taking thought for his own
security and the public revenues at the same time, he went to the
village and gave the land to the peasants to cultivate.' There are
a number of leases of land by village headmen for the amount of
the taxes only or for an exceptionally low rent; these lands had
evidently been assigned to the village or city, and are sometimes
stated to be 'from insolvent names' on the tax register ( &nd &n6ewv
6vop.d:rwv ). We also meet with levies 'for insolvent names', made
presumably when the land could not be made to yield the necessary
revenue. Saint Saba asked Anastasius to remit such an extra
levy to Jerusalem. 'The successive tractatores and vindices of the
Palestine revenues,' he explained, 'being pressed for roo lb. gold
which could not be collected from insolvent or difficult names,
were forced to impose the payment of this sum on the taxpayers of
Jerusalem according to the means of each.' The practice seems to
have been known technically in the sixth century as otayea'P1
1
0
3
The government naturally did not allow a landlord to claim
remission of tax on one of his estates if he owned others from which
he could pay the tax on the deserted farm. If he asked for relief,
he had to allow all his farms to be inspected by a peraequator, who
decided whether the good land could support the bad, Similarly
heirs were obliged to accept bad land with good, or else to renounce
the entire estate. The same principle was applied to the territories
of cities. When a city requested a peraequator, all its territory was
inspected and bad land was set off against good. The peraequator
seems to have achieved this end by allocating deserted estates to
neighbouring owners of good land. The practice seems to have
been fairly common in the fourth century; Valentinian in 365
stated that 'in Italy the burden of abandoned acreage is imposed
on the existing estates and there is no doubt that every tax-payer is
oppressed by the addition of the debts of others', 104
In 412, however, the principle was laid down that no owner of
good land was to be burdened by the arrears or insolvency of

AGRI DESERT! 8IJ
others, 'but was liable only when the deserted land was part of the
same property which he held. The rule was later extended to any
collection oflands which had once been under common ownership.
We possess an edict of the praetorian prefect Demosthenes (521
and 529), issued to the governor of Lydia, which elaborates this
principle. In the case involved, probably an actual one, the owner
of a group of estates, A, having alienated one of them to an
outsider, X, left the rest to his heirs, B, C, D. One of them, D,
alienated part of his share to another outsider, Y. Later Y could
not pay his taxes and abandoned his land. On whom does the
burden fall? First on D, the vendor; then, if he fails, on his co-heirs
B and C; and finally, if they fail, on X, the purchaser of an estate
originally belonging to A. It is little wonder that vendors of land
guaranteed prospective purchasers against l.m{JoJ.f} op.oom!J.OYV.
The law of 412 remained on the statue book, being incorporated
in Justinian's code, but the government seems to have ignored its
provisions. Under Anastasius and Justinian we hear not only of
&m(JoJ.f} op.ooo6J.wv but also of bu{JoJ.f} op.o>t>)vuwv, and the latter term
can only mean that deserted estates were compulsorily allocated not
only to owners of lands which were or had been under the same
ownership ( op.6oovJ.a), but, if these failed, to owners of lands
registered in the same census district (6p.6"'lvua).105
Another principle on which land was allocated to individuals
was laid down in 365. If a landowner petitioned the crown for
the slaves on a deserted estate or harboured runaway slaves from it,
he was made responsible for its taxes. In the sixth century this
principle was extended to landlords who received runaway colon
from deserted estates ,106
Justinian includes in his routine mandates to provincial gover-
nors instructions on how to deal with the lands of owners who
disappeared or could not pay their taxes. They are to be assigned
by decree of the governor with appeal to the praetorian prefect;
the governor may refer the case initially to the prefect if in doubt,
the estate being sequestrated in the meanwhile. We have complaints
about agri deserti from Mrica under Justin II and from Sardinia
under Maurice. The abandonment of land by its owners thus con-
tinued throughout the three centuries which followed Diocletian's
accession. How large the total was, and what proportion it bore
to the land still cultivated it is more difficult to say, for reliable
figures are few .
107
J ulian assigned tax free to the council of Antioch nearly 3 ,ooo
iuga of uncultivated land; as the territory of Antiocll must have
comprised well over 6o,ooo iuga the proportion is low, less than
I in 20. V alens gives precise figures for the fundi iuris reipub!icae
8I6 THE LAND
recently confiscated from the cities of the province of Asia; there
were 6,736! fertile iuga as against 703 'deserted and now in bad
condition and sterile, which are supported by those which we have
stated to be fertile'. The proportion is less than I in Io. In 39l
Honorius wrote off 528,o42 iugera in Campania as deserted and in
bad condition; the area of the province of Campania is not known
exactly, but the proportion of deserted land would have been
perhaps I in Io.
10
In 422 Honorius wrote off the deserted lands of the res privata
in Mrica Proconsularis and Byzacena. Here he gives precise
figures, which are startling. In the Proconsular province there
were 5,7oo centuriae I44! iugera deserted to 9,oo2 centuriae I4I
iugera in good condition, a proportion of over I in 3; in Byzacena
7,6Il centuriae 3! iugera deserted to 7,460 centuriae I8o iugera in
good condition: more than half the land was deserted. In 4 5 I
Valentinian III granted to African landowners expelled by the
Vandals the deserted lands of the province of Numidia, which
amounted to about I 3 ,ooo centuriae; here the precise proportion
cannot be determined but must have been of the same order as
that prevailing thirty years before in the two neighbouring
provinces. Finally Theodoret, writing to the praetorian prefect
Constantine in 45 I, gives figures for his city of Cyrrhus. The
whole territory comprised 62,ooo iuga of which I 5 ,ooo paid in
gold through the comitiani, the remainder in kind through the
curiales. The comitiani had got the 2,500 deserted iuga in their
share transferred to the curiales in exchange for 2, loo good iuga.
The proportion is here I in 6.109
So far as these scattered figures go, the situation seems to have
progressively deteriorated, but had not in the East become disas-
trous by the middle of the fifth century, with only about one-sixth
of the land abandoned. In Africa the loss was already of catas-
trophic proportions-a third to a half-in the first quarter of the
fifth century.
The main objection to the theory of the exhaustion of the soil
is that agri deserti seem to have been as frequent in Egypt, where
fertility was annually renewed by the flood over most of the
cultivable area, as in the rest of the empire. It is also significant
that the imperial government persisted in believing that deserted
lands could be brought back into full production if the occupier
were remitted his taxes for a few years and spent some money on
improvements. It is even more significant that former owners
shared this belief, and would reclaim land that someone else had
improved. While it is not unlikely that some land was exhausted
by persistent over-cropping, in general the deserted or sterile

AGRl DESERT/
e s t t e ~ seem to have been suffering from temporary neglect only.
The orator who thanked Constantine for his remission of taxes
to the Civitas Aeduorum in 3 n makes this point clear : it was
because the peasants, burdened with debt, could not afford to
maintain the drains and cut back the encroaching scrub that once
fertile lands had reverted to marsh and maquis.
11
o
A more important factor than exhaustion of the soil may have
been denudation. In Mediterranean lands, if the forests on the
uplands are cut and not replanted or allowed to renew themselves
naturally, the heavy seasonal rains wash away the soil. What
have been perennial streams, watering the lower areas, become
occasional tortents, which often ruin the plains below by covering
them with the stones and boulders which they wash down when
they are in spate. Denudation went on continuously during
antiquity in many areas, and in many has continued to the present
day. The ancients regularly cut timber, mainly for ships and for
roofs: the large number of timber-roofed churches of basilican
form which were built in the late empire must have called for the
felling of many large trees. They never thought of replanting
forests, and they checked their natural renewal by grazing goats,
who eat the young saplings before they have a chance to grow:
the well-wooded hills and perennial streams of Mount Athos,
where goats have been excluded for a thousand years, are a
striking contrast to the arid and rocky landscape of other parts of
Greece. Under the Roman empire the innumerable baths must
also have contributed to deforestation by their immense consump-
tion of fuel, mostly saplings.
The difficulty is to know how far the process of denudation
had gone in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. From con-
temporary authors and from descriptions given by the Arab
geographers it would appear that many areas now deforested and
denuded were in a flourishing condition not only in the late empire
but in the medieval period. Archaeological evidence shows that
in areas now utterly treeless large buildings were still being roofed
with timber in the sixth century. Some areas were no doubt
already suffering from denudation under the later empire, but the
bulk of the damage seems to have been done in later ages.
Shortage of manpower is a more plausible explanation for the
abandonment of land. Landlords seem to have been perennially
short of tenants. They welcomed allocations of barbarian pri-
soners, and persistently, despite the heavy penalties, harboured
runaway coloni. The whole course of legislation which tied the
coloni to their farms confirms this impression; it was at the demand
of landlords that the system was maintained and extended. It is a
8I8 THE LAND
measure of their anxiety to retain their tenants that the Roman
senate in 397 vehemently and successfully opposed the con-
scription of recruits from their estates, and accepted as a preferable
alternative a payment of 2 5 solidi per man. Such figures as there
are suggest the same conclusion. The early fourth century census
lists from Tralles, Magnesia on the Maeander and Astypaiaea
record the iugatio of farms and the capitatio of slaves and coloni
registered on them. The ratio at Astypalaea and Tralles is 4 capita
to 3 iuga, at Magnesia 7 capita to 6 iuga if estates which have no
capitatio are ignored: if they are included in the count, there are
only 5 capita to 6 iuga. The translation of iuga into acreage and
capita into human beings is not certain, but these figures probably
represent a labour force, including women and children
fourteen, about half of that, consisting of adult males only,
recommended by Cato and Columella-fifteen for a vineyard of
I oo iugera, eight for an arable farm of 200 iugera. The landlords no
doubt employed both tenants and casual labour not registered
on their estates, but even allowing for this the shortage of agri-
cultural manpower is striking.
111
Some deserted estates were undermanned; among the improve-
ments which a grantee might make was the restocking of the land
with slaves. The landowners of Mrica complained to Justin II
that as a result of his predecessor's legislation many of their
coloni had migrated elsewhere, and that these estates had since
remained desolate, to the detriment both of the owners and of
the treasury. It was reported to Gregory the Great that many of
the tenants of the church of Caralis had moved to the lands of
private owners, with the result that 'the estates of the church,
their own cultivators being occupied elsewhere, are falling into
ruin and are incapable of paying their taxes'. But some owners
abandoned estates leaving slaves or coloni on them, whom neigh-
bouring landlords claimed from the crown as ownerless property
or illicitly took over. It would seem that shortage of manpower
was not at any rate the sole or main reason for the abandonment
of land. It does not appear to have been important until after the
great plague of Justinian's reign, which according to Procopius
'swept over the whole world and especially the Roman empire and
destroyed the greater part of the peasantry, with the result that
estates naturally were deserted' .112
Another factor which must have played its part, though we
have no means of assessing its importance, was insecurity. The
constant pillaging expeditions of the Germans across the Rhine
and Danube must have made many landlords in the frontier
provinces give up hope, while in the East the raids of the Isaurians
"($_

AGRI DESERT!
in eastern Asia Minor, the Saracens in Syria, the Blemmyes and
other nomads in Egypt and Cyrenaica, must have had the same
effect. In Mrica too the nomads were encroaching; in the reign
ofValentinian I they made havoc in Tripolitania, and their activities
no doubt contributed to the ruin of Byzacena and Numidia in the
early fifth century. The Mrican provinces were also at this
time suffering from the attempts of the imperial government to
stamp out Donatism; many Donatist peasants must have abandoned
their farms and joined the circumcellion bands. Moreover, in 4 53,
when I 3,ooo centuriae were deserted in Numidia, the Vandals had
just evacuated that province, and had doubtless taken with them
most of the stock and movables. This was doubtless one of the
reasons why Mrica was in an exceptionally bad case in the second
quarter of the fifth century.
Contemporaries generally attribute the phenomenon to heavy
taxation. According to Lactantius it was because the resources of
tenants were exhausted by Diocletian's exorbitant indictions that
fields were deserted and cultivated land went back to scrub. The
spokesman of the Civitas Aeduorum similarly attributes the ruin
of the land to the poverty of the cultivators, and expects that all
will be well as a result of Constantine's reducing the assessment
of the city. More significant is the matter-of-fact statement Qf
the lawyer in the Egyptian lawsuit of 340. 'The father of the
defendants owned lands in the village of Caranis ... he cultivated
them well and pocketed the profits from them and at the same time
paid the public taxes on them to the most sacred treasury ... but
it appears, to make a long story short, that the father of the
defendants died leaving as his heirs his daughters, i.e. the defen-
dants, and they, not being able to stand up against the
demanded for the same lands, fled.' Conversely when Juhan
granted 3 ,ooo uncultivated iuga to the council of Antioch tax free,
both he and they regarded this land as a valuable asset: they,
according to J ulian, :Ulocated it co.rruptly to those who
needed it, he granted 1t to the decunons who were saddled w1th
the most expensive liturgies. Similarly, veterans who received
deserted lands tax free were deemed to be well rewarded.
113
It is assumed throughout the imperial legislation that the
deserted lands are owned by landlords, who cultivate them through
slaves or coloni: it is to be inferred in the Caranis case that the
reason why the two daughters could not face the taxes which their
father had regularly paid was that he cultivated the land himself,
and they had to let it to a tenant.
It would appear then that on some land the taxation was so
heavy that the owner could not make a profit on it, or at any rate
!,/'
il
820 THE LAND
so little that he could not afford the expenses necessary to keep
it in good condition, in particular the maintenance of drainage
and irrigation: or that he squeezed his tenants so hard that they
could not afford the charges of upkeep. Whether land was culti-
vated or not depended then on the margin between the gross
rent which the landlord could extract from it, and the taxes which
he or his tenant had to deduct from the rent.
The rent would obviously depend on the quality of the land
and its agricultural use, as olive groves, vineyards, arable or
pasture. The tax also in some dioceses varied according to these
factors. In Syria there was an elaborate system of classification
into olives, 'old' and 'mountain', vineyard, three qualities of arable
and pasture. The fiscal unit, the iugum, was made up of varying
areas of each. Syria seems, however, to have been exceptional.
In Asia the only distinction recognised was olives, vineyard,
arable and pasture, with no classification by quality. In Egypt
taxation was assessed by the arura, with differential rates only for
vineyards, orchards and the like. In Mrica the system was even
more rough and ready, land being assessed by the centuria of 200
iugera, apparently without regard to use or quality, and in Italy
the millena seems to have been a simple unit of area. In Syria
therefore the tax would, in so far as the land was correctly classified,
vary with the rental value, while in Africa all land would pay the
same tax whether it produced a high or a low rent. This may
partly explain why the proportion of deserted land was so much
higher in Africa than in Syria.
114
For taxation in Egypt we possess one document of paramount
value, the sixth-century assessment of the city of Antaeopolis.
Here the whole tax in corn and in gold, including all supplementary
payments, amounts to 6I,674 artabae of wheat and I0,322 solidi
on 5 I,65 5 arurae, nearly all arable; vineyards come to 2,578! and
gardens to r,6oo. This works out at about It artabae and 4! carats
per arura; if the whole tax be translated into gold 7fr carats, or if
it be reckoned entirely in wheat 3t artabae. If landowners in
general paid at this rate they had a small margin between rent and
taxes even on good arable, less than two artabae per arura if the
rent was five, or in gold a little over 4 carats, or {, solidus.
Enterprising landlords like the Apions, as we have seen, probably
extracted a higher rent from their tenants, and it is likely that they
paid less tax in gold by avoiding supplementary payments. But
poor arable land which was let at 3 artabae or less would have
involved the owner in a loss if he paid normal taxes. For vine-
yards, orchards, palms, olives and pasture we cannot judge, as
we have no figures.us

AGRI DESERT/ 82I
For the rest of the empire we possess one document only. It
deals with the grant by Justinian to the catholic church of Ravenna
of the lands which had been held by the Arian church of that city
and had been confiscated to the res privata. The first part, which
appears to enumerate the various estates with their rentals and
taxes, is too fragmentary to be intelligible. The summary has
however survived intact and reads:
ac sic fieri sol(idi) n(umero) 2I7It
pensio sol(idi) n(umero) 932t
fiunt sol(idi) n(umero) I239
in (can)on(e) praefect(orum) sol(idi) n(umero) II53!
in titul(is) largitional(ibus) sol(idi) n(umero) 85!
This appears to mean that the gross total of the rents is 2,I7I!,
of which the net rent (pensio) is 932!: the remainder, I,239, is
made up of the taxes payable to the praetorian prefect (I, I 53!)
and those due to the largitiones (85!); and for the payment of these
the representatives of the catholic church give a bond. In sixth-
century Italy, then, it would appear that taxes absorbed 57% of
the gross rental, even on church lands which paid no superindicta,
extraordinaria or munera sordida. On poor land which was fully
taxed the landlord's margin must have dwindled to nothing.
116
The figures, then, for what they are worth, support the assertions
of the literary authorities up to a point. By the sixth century the
taxes on land seem to have been set so high as to make it un-
profitable for a landlord who paid full rate to keep low quality
land under cultivation: on such land his margin, if any, was so
small that he could not afford the expenses necessary to keep it in
good condition. The effect of taxation was most disastrous where
it was a flat rate on area, and where the amount of marginal land,
which was thus overtaxed, was a high proportion of the whole.
Both these conditions were fulfilled in Africa; hence the pheno-
menal scale on which land was abandoned in Africa, Numidia
and Byzacena, especially the last, where the rainfall is lowest and
most irregular, and cultivation depends on careful water conserva-
tion.
The extent of the evil must not be exaggerated. One must
remember that even .in the sixth century there must have been
vast areas of fertile land which yielded not only the ample revenue
which the empire still enjoyed, but provided the large incomes of
the senatorial magnates and the great sees, not to speak of countless
humbler folk. The demand for land as an investment remained
keen. Claimants persistently bombarded the office of the res privata
with petitions for estates alleged, truly or falsely, to have lapsed
822 THE LAND
to the crown. Land seems always to have found ready purchasers,
and the prices recorded are high. Once again most of our figures
come from Egypt and are for arable. The lowest figure is 4 solidi
I! arurae; in another case one arura is sold for 4 solidi and
m another 8 arurae (with of uninundated land) for 40 solidi.
The highest price recorded is 6 solidi for one arura, in the sixth
century, but in this conveyance an exceptionally low tax, half an
artaba of wheat and I! carats in gold, is specified; the land must
haye been fraudulently assessed. In this last case despite the high
pnce the return on capital is, owing to the low tax quite high
6k% if the lat;d. ":as let at 5 artabae or half shares. Land
for 4 or 5 sohd1, 1f let. at that figure and fully taxed, would yield
only 4k or 3!% on cap1tal.
117
We have one figure only from outside Egypt. In a conveyance
dated 5 39 twenty iugera at Faventia in northern Italy are sold for
IIo they are specified to be 'culti optimi arbustali' (sic),
by which 1s presumably meant orchard or olive yard. This price
5! solidi to the iugerum (equivalent to 6 solidi for the arura)
low for land of the type, but we do not know how highly it was
contrast with Italiru; land prices under the Principate
1s InstructiVe. Columella, assessmg the profitability of converting
arable to vineyard, estimates the cost of the land at I ,ooo sesterces
the which is equivalent in gold value to about I7 solidi.
He 1s probably, for the sake of his argument, pitching the price
rather high, but the passage implies that one might have to pay
as much good arable land. There were in Columella's day
wh1ch te.nded to push up the price ofitalian land beyond its
stnctly econom1c value, for the senatorial and equestrian nobility
were still mainly Italian by origin and domicile, and were com-
peting .to invest in . Italian !and the profits they acquired from
the em121te .. Th1s no longer applied in Justinian's
re1gn. But the mam difference between the first and the sixth
century was that in the first Italian land was tax free and in the
sixth it bore same high as the rest of the
To summanse the problem, 1t would seem that a considerable
and growing proportion of the land was abandoned by landlords
during the period of the later Roman empire. The area abandoned
probably did not in most areas exceed say zo%, and the land
mvolved was mostly of poor quality. Land of good and average
quality to yield enough to pay not only taxes but rent,
and remamed m commanding such high prices
that return _on Investment m land was low, in the range of 4%
There Is no evidence that there was general exhaustion of the soil,
or that much land had been ruined by denudation, only that

AGRI DESERT! 823
marginal land fell back into waste through lack of proper main-
tenance. The abandonment of land may have sometimes been
due to shortage of agricultural labour and in some areas to insecu-
rity, but in the main it was caused by the high and increasing rate
of taxation, which reduced the landlord's net rent on marginal land
to vanishing point.
The actual fall in agricultural production would not have been
so great as the figures of abandoned land suggest, for in the first
place this land was the poorest, and in the second place some of it,
though booked as deserta or sterilia, continued to be cultivated by
the landlords to whom it was assigned; for even if it yielded no
profit, it might be made to produce enough to pay a part at least
of the taxes due for it. Finally, we must set against the areas lost
to agriculture the hitherto unproductive land which was developed
under the later empire. East of Antioch, in what is now desert,
are ruins of scores of well-built and evidently once prosperous
villages. They were all built in the fifth and sixth centuries, and
there is no trace of earlier occupation. They depended, as their
many presses show, on the cultivation of the olive. Here at least
agriculture advanced, and it may have done so in other areas
where the archaeological evidence has been obliterated by later
occupation.
119
CHAPTER XXI
INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT
T
HE Roman empire in many ways provided conditions
to It formed a vast common market,
stretching from Bntam to Egypt, and even when it was
administratively divided no political barriers were set up against
trade: the embargo which Stilicho placed on merchants from the
Eastern parts during the latter part of his rule was quite exceptional.
Even when the Western parts broken up into barbarian king-
doms trade seems to have remamed free from political difficulties.
In the early seventh century there were still Alexandrian merchants
who specialised in the Gallic trade (FaJ.J.oJe6pm), and at the other
end of the route at Marseilles there were still in the late sixth
century regular imports of papyrus, which must have come from
Egypt, as well as of oil, which probably came from Africa: wines of
central Italy and of Gaza were also imported into Gaul. The
Alexandrian merchants who specialised in the Spanish trade
(I:navoJe6pot) seem still to have continued their activities in the
sixth century: .we hear of 'Grc;:ek' merchants landing at Spanish
and conung up to Ementa, ru;.d the Visigothic kings were
hberal to overseas merchants, allowmg them to settle their own
disputes between themselves according to their own laws and to
employ local men as agents, provided that they did not take them
overseas with them.l
There were also no currency difficulties to hamper large-scale
commerce. Imperial. coins w:herever minted were legal tender
throughout the empire. Retail trade must have been inconven-
ienced by chaotic state of the. copper currency in the fourth and
fifth centunes, and by the growmg shortage of silver in the fifth
the was improved in the latter part of the fifth century by
the Issue at Rome and Carthage and later by Anastasius in the East
of large copper coins which had a more or less stable relation with
the solidus, an1 by the renewed issue. of silver by the Vandal
and Ostrogothic kings-and later by the Imperial government in
Italy. For large transactions, however, the solidus from the latter
824

CONDITIONS OF TRADE 825
part of Constantine's reign provided a reliable and stable medium
of exchange. Solidi were accepted not only throughout the empire
but in northern Europe, where large numbers have been found
and in the Far East. 'The second sign of the sovereignty which God
has granted to the Romans', Cosmas Indicopleustes declared, 'is
that all nations trade in their currency, and in every place from one
end of the world to the other it is acceptable and envied by every
man and every kingdom': and Cosmas, having often sailed to
India, could answer for one end of the world at any rate. The
Western barbarian kingdoms accepted imperial solidi, and most
minted their own on the same standard. Only the gold coins of
the Merovingians were lighter and were not acceptable in Italy:
Gregory the Great asked the agent of the Gallic estates of the
Roman church not to remit his rents in local solidi, but to buy
clothes and slaves and despatch them to Rome. a
There was an excellent road network, and roads and bridges were
maintained by the government at the expense of landowners.
Harbour and inland waterways were likewise maintained by the
state. Security was, to judge by the many records of travel by sea
and land which we possess, on the whole good. It was only in
limited areas that brigandage was a serious menace-in Upper
Egypt the Blemmyes made travel unsafe in the early fifth century,
and in eastern Asia Minor the Isaurians at the same period reduced
the towns to a state of siege. Piracy was rife from Diocletian's
day onwards in the western ocean, but in the Mediterranean little is
heard of it until the Vandals went into the business on a large
scale.
3
Tolls levied were not excessive. Within the empire the standard
rates seem to have been 2 per cent. or 2t per cent. in the fourth
century as under the Principate: in the fifth century 5 per cent. is
mentioned in Numidia. How frequently they were levied it is diffi-
cult to say. In addition to the old imperial inter-provincial customs
there were the tolls levied by the cities, which the imperial govern-
ment took over under Constantine. Laws in the Codes which declare
that country people bringing back goods for their own use or for
agricultural purposes, or taking in goods for delivery as taxes, are
not chargeable with duty, suggest that octroi posts at the gates of
towns were common, and import and export dues were probably
charged at all harbours. These tolls may have been vexatious but
were hardly a serious check to commerce. Merchants travelling by
sea would presumably have been charged only on the goods which
they bought and sold at each port, and not on their whole cargo.
Since there was little long-distance trade by land, the local octroi
dues would have affected only small-scale local traffic.4
826 INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT
V alentinian III in 444 imposed on trade. small . but
vexatious tax, the siliquaticum, a levy of one stltqua on the solidus
(r in 24) on every sale, payable half by the. vendor and half by the
purchaser. All sales had to be conducted m a tax
collector, without whose receipt the transact10n mvahd, and
to make this possible cities were ordered to fix appomted days and
places for markets, and no was permitted at these.
The si!iquaticum, however, was tmposed only on the restncte.d area
which the Western imperial government still controlled m the
middle of the fifth century, and survived only in the Ostrogothic
kingdom of Italy.
5

Monopolies are not heard of until the latter part of the fifth
century when Leo and Zeno prohibited them in 473 and 483. The
second 'law forbids the issue of rescripts, pragmatic sanctions or
annotationes to individuals to have a monopoly of clothing or fish
or other kinds of goods, and cancels such rescripts already issued.
It also forbids combinations between traders and craftsmen to fix
the price of their wares and other such restrictive practices. In
Ostrogothic Italy the monopolium was associated with the siliqua-
ticum, being farmed to the same contractors. It may be conjec-
tured that to facilitate allocation of the si!iquaticum traders in
various classes of goods were that had to pay
the privilege. In t.J:le Just!nlan, .m the interests of pubhc
security, created an tmpertll:l monopoly 1n the n;anufacture of arms:
henceforth only the imperral armament factorres were to produce
them private armourers were to be drafted into these factories, and
the ;rms produced were to be stored in the imperial armoury,
or in the local depots established in certain cities. Justinian also
created a de facto monopoly of silk fabrics for the imperial factories
operated. by the. sacrae !argitiones: this . he achieved. by. fixing
price of silk fabrtcs at a low figure, desptte the great rrse 1n the pnce
of raw silk, and thus driving private manufacturers and merchants
out of business. He is also alleged by Procopius in the Secret
History to have ignored Zeno's law of 483, which he republished
in his Code, and granted private monopolies right and left, thereby
enormously increasing the cost of living. There is no doubt some
germ of truth in this allegation, but like all Procopius' charges
against Justinian it is probably greatly exaggerated.
6
Trade beyond the frontiers of the empire was strictly controlled,
mainly for security reasons, and more severely taxed: import and
export dues were levied at the rate of u! per cent. (octavae). In the
Eastern empire at any rate foreign trade was subject to the control of
the comites commerciorum, one for Illyricum, one for Moesia and
Pontus, and one for Oriens and Egypt, and had to pass through a
THE NAVICUARII
few specified places. Thus Clysma (Suez) was at times the sole
authorised port for the Red Sea and Indian trade: at others Iotabe,
an island at the north end of the gulf of Aqaba, was also a customs
station. Under Diocletian land trade with Persia was canalised
through Nisibis. In the fifth and sixth centuries it was limited to
Callinicum on the Roman side and Nisibis and Artaxata on the
Persian. Controlling the Black Sea trade there was a station at
Hieron on the Bosporus, while commerce across the Danube was
usually limited to a few points: V alens specified two only on the
lower Danube in 369 and on the Upper Danube his brother in
371 built a 'burgus cui nomen Commercium, qua causa et factus
est'. Various restrictions were placed on exports at various times.
V alentinian forbade the export of wine and oil, and V alens of gold,
but these restrictions, though preserved in the Code of Justinian,
were certainly not observed. Marcian strictly prohibited the export
of arms and armour, probably reviving an old rule; iron and bronze
had been on the prohibited list in the fourth century.7
While conditions were in these ways generally favourable to
trade, there were on the other hand important factors which
restricted private commerce. In the first place the imperial govern-
ment, the greatest consumer, made virtually no use of the private
merchant, supplying the major needs of its hundreds of thousands
of employees by levies in kind upon the producers, by manufactur-
ing some parts of its requirements in state factories, and by con-
veying the goods thus levied or manufactured to their recipients by
means of state transport services.
Transport by sea was the business of the guilds of shippers
(corpora navicu!ariorum) controlled by the praetorian prefects or by
the praefecti annonae of Africa and Alexandria, who were responsible
to the praetorian prefects of Italy and the East respectively. They
were organised on a diocesan basis: we hear of the guilds of Spain,
Africa and Oriens and of the Alexandrian and Carpathian fleets,
which represented Egypt and Asiana. Membership of the guilds
was hereditary in that it depended on the ownership of land
subject to the navicu!aria Junctio. If navicular# alienated such land
either by will or bequest, or sale or gift, those who acquired it were
obliged to become members of the guild or to contribute to its
expenses pro rata. This rule applied whatever the status of the
new owner, even if the land passed to the res privata or to the
church: Augustine refused to accept for his church an estate which
was burdened with the navicu!aria Junctio because of the trouble
X
which it brought to its owner. The rule was course .
neglected, and periodically the govern.ment reclaimed for the
lands whose owners refused to contribute: there was no prescrip-
tion against the Junctio until in 42 3 fifty years was allowed to count.
Periodically also the gover?ment rerl:ewed the of
the guild by compulsonly enrollmg persons with sufficient
landed wealth.
8
The navicular# were paid freight for the cargoes which they
carried: the rate quoted for the navicular# Orientis in 334 for
conveying corn from Egypt to Constantinople was one sol.idus per
I 000 modii and I per cent. of the corn, as for the Alexandnan fleet.
As a solidus would buy 30 modii, the rate works out at about 4 per
cent. of the value of the cargo, one-third of the commercial rate
fixed by Diocletian for the same voyage ( I2 denarii per modius,
which was worth roo denarii, that is I2 per cent.). The payment
was not indeed expected to cover their costs-Constantine expresses
the hope that 'encouraged by all this and spending scarcely any-
thing out of their own property they may diligently make frequent
voyages'. . . . . .
The navicular# were marnly compensated m privileges which cost
the government nothing, exemptio.n from th.e guardianship . of
minors (tutela) and from the Lex Juha and Papia (whi.ch
restricted inheritance in certain cases), and above all immuruty
from curial obligations. They were also exempt from customs,
even in respect of goods which they were carrying on their own
account. When the corpus Orientis was revived in 37I, members
were also allowed remission of land tax, in corn (and probably
other foodstuffs) only, not in gatments, horses or such levies, at the
rate of 50 iuga for each Io,ooo modii of shipping capacity which they
owned; this was for the repair and replacement of their ships.
9
We chiefly hear of navicularii in connection with the shipment of
corn from Africa to Rome and from Egypt to Constantinople, but
they were also required to ship cargoes to the supply bases of the
army (expeditionales portus). They were obliged to accept cargoes
between I April and IO October, winter navigation being con-
sidered too dangerous to be worth while, and were originally
allowed two years by Constantine within which to bring back
their delivery receipts. In 396, however, it was found that they took
advantage of the long delay to trade in the corn that they carried,
and the interval was reduced to one year unless they conld prove
delay by bad weather. Alleged losses due to storms, whether by
total wreck, or by spoiling the cargo by water, or by jettison, were
carefully investigated, and if they were proved to the satisfaction
of the court, the government stood the loss.lO

THE NAVICULARII
Navicularii might be of very varying status. A constitution of
p6 envisages their being 'either decurions or plebeians or of some
other superior dignity'. When the corpus Orientis was reorganised
in 37I, the praetorian prefect was directed to enrol not only curiales
and retired officials of the provincial ojjicia (primipilares) but ex-
provincial governors and other honorati (excluding former palatini):
even senators might volunteer. Navicularii were not expected
to navigate their own ships; in investigations of damage by storms
it was normally the skipper (magister navis) and sailors who were
examined, or in case of total loss their relatives whom the navicu-
larius produced in evidence. The navicular# were primarily ship-
owners, whose business it was to finance the building, repair and
operation of their ships: the guilds must also have included many
sleeping members, owners of praedia naviculariorum who merely paid
levies towards the expenses of the guild. By this curious system
the government maintained a state merchant fleet financed out
of the rents (supplemented by partial remission of taxes) of certain
lands. It also reserved the right to charter any privately owned
ship of over 2,ooo modii capacity, whatever the rank of the
owner.
11
The origins of the system can only be conjectured. During the
Principate the imperial government encouraged wealthy men to
put ships at its disposal by granting them various privileges,
including immunity from civic magistracies and liturgies. De-
curious and other landowners who might otherwise have been
elected to their city councils were thus tempted into the service;
it was even found necessary to enact that rich men might not
receive immunity unless they put a substantial proportion of their
fortunes into shipping. Shippers who joined the service would
also have put their profits into land. Since the navicular# would
have wished to hand on their immunity to their sons, the service
no doubt became in general hereditary. It had never, however, in all
probability been very profitable, or the lure of immunities would
not have been required, and with the inflation of the third century,
the real value of the freights paid sank, it no doubt became a
positive burden. By this time, however, the government, unable
to dispense with their services, compelled the navicularii to carry on,
regarding their immunities as an adequate compensation for the
losses which they made.12
There is less information about inland water transport. There
was a state-controlled guild of bargees (caudicarii), who carried grain
up the Tiber from Ostia to Rome, and another similar guild of
boatmen (lintriones), whose sixty members supplied the baths of
Rome with fuel. King Theoderic created a state fleet of a thousand
galleys (dromones) for the transport of public corn. These operated
mainly by sea, carrying corn round the coasts of!taly, but they
supplemented the cursus publicus along the Po, a detachment .bemg
based on Hostilia. The ships were built by direct labour, the timber
being commandeered-the landowners were compensated only for
cypresses and pines felled. They were manned by rowers (drom-
onarii), levied by the prefect, who as m_zlttes and
received annonae: they tn1ght be free men or slaves, either hued from
their owners or bought from them and freed. On the Nile we hear
of skippers (uv{Jeevrrr:al) of public or fiscal boats, but owner skippers
(vavuJ.neouvfJeeV7J-cal) of private boats are commoner. They received
the tribute corn from the civic authorities, together with money for
freights, and delivered it at the state granaries at Neapolis by
Alexandria. The service was probably compulsory; they had to
give guarantees that they would perform their functionP
For land transport there was a service directly managed by the
state through the praetorian prefects and provincial governors, the
cur sus publicus. It consisted of two divisions, the express post, or
cursus velox (o;vq 1Je6p,oq), and the slow wagon post, the cursus
clabularis (n?.a-cvq 1Je6p,oq). The express post provided saddlehorses
(veredi) and packhorses for luggage (parbippi), light two-wheeled
carriages (birotae) drawn by three mules, and four-wheeled carts
(raedae ), also drawn by mules, eight in summer and ten in winter.
It was intended primarily for the use of officials travelling on
government business, especially agentes in rebus, but was also used
for conveying gold and silver or other valuable goods; Constantine
ordered that the copies of the scriptures produced by Eusebius for
the churches of Constantinople should be sent up by it. There were
strict limits on the weight which might be carried: a horseman
might take only 30 lbs., a two-wheeled carriage 200 lbs., a four-
wheeled car r,ooo lbs.t4
The post could be used only by persons to whom a warrant
(evectio) had been granted, and in theory warrants were issued only
for official purposes. They were however freely granted to persons
invited to the comitatus, and to bishops attending councils convoked
by imperial authority. Very high officials, the praetorian prefects
and the masters of the soldiers, were given warrants to return to
their hol:nes after laying down their posts. It was difficult to enforce
the rules. Private persons of sufficiently high status found little
difficulty in securing warrants from or through friends in high
places. Symmachus thanked Ausonius for 'four warrants which
THE CURSUS P{]BLICUS
have been enormously convenient for the coming and going of my
people' and Stilicho for others for his agents going to Spain to
buy horses for his son's praetorship, while Melania travelled with a
large retinue from Palestine to Constantinople by the public post
though she had no warrant. IS
For the cursus clabularis ox wagons (angariae) were used; the
maxinmm load was I, 5 oo lbs. and the standard team two pairs of
oxen. The wagon post was mainly used for carrying the foodstuffs
levied for the annona, but also for the uniforms and arms destined for
the troops, and for timber and building stone for public works.
Julian promised as a special concession to the men whom Con-
stantius had summoned from Gaul to the Eastern front that they
might use the cursus for transporting their baggage and families.
This was, however, irregular. A law of 36o allowed troops in
transit only two angariae per legion for the use of the sick. Pro-
vincial governors also were allowed to use it for their tours.
Majorian allowed them two angariae, one for themselves and one
for their ojficium, as well as four riding horses. This service was
controlled by warrants, called tractoriae. These, too, could be
obtained by private persons with sufficient influence. Julian had to
forbid the use of the post for carting marble for the erection of
private houses, and Symmachus asked the praetorian prefect
Vincentius to renew the tractoriae given by his predecessor Theo-
dore for the conveyance to Rome of the racehorses which he had
bought in Spain.16
The maintenance of these services demanded a vast and costly
organisation. In the cities along the main roads and at inter-
mediate points between them were maintained posting stations,
the larger called mansiones, provided with lodging accommodation,
the smaller mutationes, only with relays of beasts. Some idea of the
vast number of the post stations can be gathered from the Antonine
Itinerary and the Peutinger Table, but these do not give the full
picture, recording only cities and mansiones as a rule. A record
of his journey kept by a pilgrim who travelled from Burdigala to
Jerusalem and back in 3 33 gives full details for the roads along
which he travelled. Between Burdigala and the Italian frontier
he passed through I4 cities (as well as one village and one fortress),
I I mansiones and 3 5 mutationes. Across the Italian diocese from
Segusio to Poetovio he counted I4 cities, 9 mansiones and 30
mutationes. From thence across lllyricum and Thrace to Constan-
tinople, over 900 miles, cities were scarce-he passed only I4-but
2 8 mansiones filled the gaps between them, and there were 5 3
mutationes. From Chalcedon across Asia Minor to the borders of
Cilicia, some 5 6o miles, there were only I I cities, but I 5 mansiones
and 28 mutationes. From Tarsus to Jerusalem along the coast
cities were more frequent; passed 20 as well as 7 and 2I
mutationes. On his return JOUrney he took the alternative route
across Thrace and illyricum via Thessalonica to Apollonia. Here
again cities were scarce, only I3, to I4 mansiones with 32 mutationes.
Thence he crossed the Adriatic to Hydruntum, and so up to Milan.
In Italy cities were he through 42, and only 6
mansiones with 36 mutatzones. Stations were, of course, at various
distances, but very rarely more than I 5 miles apart and often only
8 or 9: the average over the pilgrim's whole journey works out at
I o or I I milesP
The maintenance of the stations was charged to the revenues
of the province in which they lay, and it was the duty of the
provincial governor to build or repair them by corvees and levies
on the provincial population. Each station was managed by a
person styled a manceps or contractor; the title was a survival fro:n
an earlier age when the post had been farmed. The charge was 1n
some provinces laid on retired officials of the provincial ojjicium,
or of those of the vicar or rationalis of the diocese; even officials of
the praetorian prefects might be called upon to serve if they retired
before reaching the rank of cornicularius. More usually, it would
seem, mancipes were decurions nominated by the city councils.
Valentinian tried to draw upon a higher class, those who had
obtained the honorary rank of comites, praesides or rationales, that is
the wealthiest curiales, who had thus succeeded in evading their
regular duties, and suggested they migh.t where convenient
be put in charge of a group of stations; but this reform short-
lived. Mancipes were by a law of 3 8 I to serve for a penod not
exceeding five years, and were to be rewarded after satisfactory
service with the perfectissimate. The office was evidently much
disliked both for its exacting duties-a manceps was not allowed
to leave his post for more than thirty days-and its financial re-
sponsibilities.18
In the stations were kept an appropriate number of aninrals;
according to Procopius as many as forty horses in each. So high
a figure was probably maintained only on frequented routes, for a
rule was laid down in 3 78 that no station was to dispatch more than
five (amended in 382 to six) horses per day, except for bearers of
imperial letters or holders of warrants marked urgent: not more
than one cart per day was to be forwarded. The average working
life of beasts was apparently four years, for 2 5 per cent. of the
establishment had to be replaced annually by a levy on the provin-
cials; this levy was probably usually commuted-we find in
Egyptian land tax receipts of the early fourth century many
THE CURSUS PUBLICUS
payments (in denarii) 'for the account of worn-out public
beasts' .
19
Barley to feed the beasts was provided out of the provincial land
tax. A constitution of 3 6 5 states that hitherto in the Suburbicarian
provinces fodder had been despatched to the several mutationes and
mansiones for the beasts deputed to the public post suddenly and
without forethought at the whim of the tabularii. The consular
Anatolius had remedied this chaos by fixing a regular schedule of
deliveries at fixed dates, and allocating them to the various cities
with due regard to the distance and difficulty of the journey, and
this reform was now to be applied throughout Italy.
20
Each station had its staff of carpenters to mend the carriages and
wagons, of veterinary surgeons, and of gro<;>ms (hippocomi or
muliones), the last on the scale of one to three arumals. These were
hereditary public slaves, provided with rations and clothes, but no
wages.
21
This vast organisation was tremendously expensive to maintain,
and very wasteful of manpower, and fodder. title 'de
cursu publico', one of the longest m the Theodos1an Code,
reveals the anxiety of the government through two centuries to
slacken the pressure on the postal services by checking its ex-
travagant use by officials and its illegal usurpation by private
persons. The most minute regulations were laid down to prevent
the animals being overworked: loads were carefully limited for
both horses and wagons, the daily rate of despatch of horses and
wagons was fixed: it was even laid down that riders were not to
overdrive their horses by the use of 'knotty bludgeons', but only
to employ canes or whips, which might have a barb. Yet
despite its great the post could not cope w1th ::ll.
from its regular establishment and emergency requ1s1t1ons of
horses (paraveredi) and ox wagons (parangariae) were frequently
made.
22
Efforts were also made to cut down the size of the service.
Julian, in addition to theJs.sue of warrants, the
cursus velox in one provmce, Sard1n1a, where, as he srud, lt hardly
justified its demands on the provincials; officials could organise
and pay for their own service or use their own animals. An
even more drastic cut was made in the reign of Leo, when the prae-
torian prefect Pusaeus abolished the cursus clabularis throughout
the diocese of Oriens and in some other regions: when wagons were
required for troop movements, foreign ambassadors, or for
carting supplies to the arms factones or arms to the troops, they
were to be hired from professional carters. Such a step was by now
feasible since most of the taxation in kind had been commuted into
gold, and many of the troops were also paid in money. Under
Justinian the praetorian prefect John the Cappadocian abolished
both the cursus velox and the cursus clabularis in various districts,
including Asiana. Procopius' strictures on this step reveal what an
economic burden the post was. In the good old days, he explains,
the post had not only provided for the rapid transit of messages,
but had been a blessing to the landowners, especially those of the
inland districts, since they were able to sell to it their barley and
thus obtain money to pay their gold taxes. If the abolition of the
post spelt their ruin, as he and John Lydus aver, its barley
consumption must have been prodigious.23
Both the sacrag largitiongs and the rgs privata had their own trans-
port services, called bastagag, They were staffed by bastagarii, who,
unlike the public slaves of the cursus publicus, were of military
status; their reception as recruits into the army was strictly
forbidden in 384. They had animals under their charge and were
entitled to replacements at the rate of ro per cent. (raised by
Justinian to 20 per cent.) per annum. How these services were
related to the cur sus publicus is obscure, as both the largitiongs and
the ns privata were e.ntitled to make use of the cursus for trans-
porting gold, silver and clothes. 24
From the time of Diocletian the state manufactured all arms
required for the imperial forces in its own factories (jabricag), We
have a complete list of these as they existed at the turn of the fourth
to the fifth centuries. There were fifteen fa<:tories in the Eastern
parts, general works for the production of shields and arms at
Damascus, Antioch, Edessa, Nicomedia, Sardis, Hadrianopolis,
Marcianopolis, Thessalonica, Naissus and Ratiaria: at Caesarea of
Cappadocia and Antioch and Nicomedia works for heavy cavalry
armour (clibanariag); at Irenopolis in Cilicia a lance factory and at
Horreum Margi a shield factory. In the Western parts there were
twenty in all, five in Illyricum, six in Italy, and nine in Gaul, but
many of these were more specialised. There were shield works at
Aquincum, Carnuntum, Lauriacum, Cremona, Augustodunum and
Augusta Trevirorum, arrow factories at Concordia and Matisco a
bow at Ticinum, a breastplate works at Mantua, swo'rd
factones at Luca and Remi, and one for ballistag at Treviri. At
Sirmium, Salona, Verona, Argentomagus, Ambiani and Augusto-
dunum there were mixed arms works: the last was the only Western
factory to .heavy cavalry armour. These factories, original-
ly under the dtrectton of the praetorian prefects, had by 3 90 passed
FACTORIES, QUARRIES AND MINES 835
into the hands of the masters of the offices. There were also
factories for producing the bronze armour, adorned with silver
and gold, worn by officers. These establishments, the workers in
which were called barbaricarii, were originally, because they
handled the precious metals, under the comgs sacrarum largitionum.
In the West they still remained so in the fifth century, when there
were three, at Arelate, Remi and Treviri. In the East they passed
between 3 74 and the death of Theodosius the Great to the magiskr
ojjiciorum; two establishments are recorded, at Constantinople and
Antioch.
25
The workers in these factories ranked as soldiers. They received
rations (annonag), and like soldiers were hereditarily tied to their
profession; they were branded, for easier identification in case
they escaped, as were recruits. Each factory was equated with a
regiment, being commanded by a tribune or pragpositus. The
workers held the normal military grades, rising by seniority to
become the primicgrius Jabricag, who after two years' service
retired with the rank of protgctor. The service was evidently held in
good esteem; volunteers who offered themselves had to prove that
they were not of curial status. Fabricensgs seem to have been men
of some substance; landlords liked to employ them-illegally-as
procuratorgs or conductorgs of their estates. The members of each
factory were jointly responsible to the government for any financial
default, and in view of this responsibility Theodosius I! allocated to
them the property of any worker who died intestate without heirs.
26
The Jabricag were supplied with iron and other raw materials,
such as horn (for making bows), by the praetorian prefects, whose
office contained a scrinium armorum which handled the necessary
levies. Charcoal was also supplied; its production was a sordidum
munus imposed on landowners. The weight of the arms produced
was checked against that of the metal issued; there is a story that
Valentinian condemned to death the pragpositus Jabricag who
produced a breastplate so highly burnished that it had lost a little
weight. Workers were expected to produce a specified number of
weapons per month. This at any rate was the rule with the bar-
baricarii. According to a constitution dated 374, it was the rule at
Antioch that each worker should in every thirty days make six
bronze helments with cheek pieces, and in the same period decorate
eight with silver and gold, whereas at Constantinople the cor-
responding figures were six and three: the emperor ordered work
at Constantinople to be speeded up to Antiochene standards.
27
The Jabricag must have been large establishments, for their
personnel was a element in. the po1;mlation of the t?wns
in which they were sJtuated. At Hadr1anopo!Js they are menttoned
as a leading element in the riots against the Arian council held at
that town contemporaneously with the Council of Sardica, and later
in 3 76 as an important part of the force which the magistrates of the
city raised to attack the Goths. At Caesarea too the fabricenses are
recorded to have been prominent in the riots in support of Basil. 2s
The state also operated, through the comes sacrarum !argitionum, a
number of weaving mills, both for woollen and linen fabrics, and
dyeworks, to produce uniforms for the troops and the civil service
and high quality garments for the court. We have a full list of these
establishments for the Western empire in the early fifth century.
There were only two linen mills (!inyphia), at Vienna in Gaul and at
Ravenna. Woollen mills (gynaecia) were much more numerous. In
Italy they existed at Rome, Aquileia, Milan and Canusium with
V enusia: in Illyricum at Bassianae, Sirmium and Iovia: in Gaul at
Lugdunum, Remi, Treviri, Tornacum and Augustodunum; in
Africa at Carthage; and even in Britain at Venta. There were nine
dyeing establishments, at Tarentum and Cissa in Italy, at Syracuse
in Sicily, at Salona in Dalmatia, at Telo and Narbo in Gaul, in the
Balearic isles, at Girba in Tripolitania, and in Mrica. There were
also a few gynaecia and baphia in the West under the control of the
res privata. For the Eastern parts we possess no similar list. We
happen to hear of woollen mills at Heraclea of Thrace, Cyzicus,
Caesarea of Cappadocia and Tyre, a linen mill at Scythopolis and
dyeworks in Phoenicia and Cyprus. There is a single reference, in a
law addressed in 344 to the praetorian prefect ofltaly, to ca!carienses
or bootmakers; no such factories are recorded in the Notitia Digni-
tatum for the Eastern or the Western parts.29
These factories were managed by procuratores and manned by
state slaves. During the Great Persecution we hear of Christians
being made slaves of the treasury and enrolled in the linyphia and
gynaecia, but by the middle of the fourth century the workers in the
state factories had become hereditary groups. They are still called
slaves (mancipia); the workers in each factory are styled familiae,
the word used for slave households; and the Senatusconsultum
Claudianum was invoked to enslave free women who married them.
But it is clear that de facto they were free persons bound by a
hereditary tie to their trades. In 424 it was even necessary to
reclaim purple fishers (murilegu!i) who had illegally obtained codicils
of digmties, and in the sixth century the status of a murilegu!us was
often preferred to that of a curia!is.ao
These factories were like the fabricae quite considerable establish-
ments: the weavers both at Cyzicus and at Caesarea were an im-
portant element in the population in the fourth century. We
know very little of the way in which they were run, except that each

FACTORIES, QUARRIES AND MINES 837
weaving factory was expected to produce a fixed number of
garments per year. The workers presumably received rations like
the public slaves of the cur sus pub!icus.3
1
How they were provided with their raw materials is not clear.
Flax and wool were levied in kind from Egyptian villages in the
fourth century, and were presumably forwarded to the factories.
A law of 395 records that materials (species) were compulsorily
purchased for the gynaecium of Carthage from the corporati of the
city, and another of 374 distinguishes the !inteones (of the state
factory) from 'the Scythopolitan linenweavers subject to the public
levy' ( obnoxios Scytopolitanos linyfos publico canoni'). These
laws suggest that in some towns the guilds of private weavers had
to deliver to the local factory either yarn or fabrics for finishing.
The dye works produced their own dyes. The principal task of the
muri!eguli or conchy!io!egu!i was, as their name suggests, fishing for
the murex. Their boats seem to have been maintained on a system
similar to that of the navicu!arii, for a law of 424 rules that the posses-
sions of muri!egu!i which have come to be held by outsiders by
whatever title are to be restored to their original owners, unless
the present holders are willing to undertake the service attached to
them.
32
In the early fifth century, when the levy of vestes had been
commuted to gold, and the troops generally received money al-
lowances for uniform, the factories received cash grants. A
law of 423 enjoins that five-sixths of the sum raised by the com-
muted levy should be distributed in cash to the troops, and the
remaining sixth paid to the gynaecia, which are to produce uniforms
for recruits and private soldiers. The government factories seem
at no time to have produced enough clothes to meet more than a
small fraction of the state's requirements. Throughout the fourth
century there were regular levies of garments in kind, and the law
of 42 3 suggests that by that date the factories produced only a
sixth of the uniforms required.
33
The government claimed a monopoly of marble quarrying, but
did not often exercise it. Thus in 320 a general licence was given to
all and sundry to quarry marble, and in 363, owing to the high
price which marbles were fetching, a similar general licence was
issued. In 3 82 quarries were ordered to pay a tenth of their product
to the government, as well as a tenth to the owner of the land. In
393, however, private extraction of marble was prohibited in the
interests of the state quarries. Of these there were three of out-
standing importance in the East, at Alexandria Troas, at Docimium
in Phrygia and in the island of Proconnesus in the Propontis.
Little is known of the management of state quarnes. In some
convict labour was employed. During the Great Persecution
many Christians were sent to the quarries of Egypt, including the
famous porphyry and granite quarries of the Mons Porphyrites and
Mons Claudianus in the Eastern Desert, and condemnation to the
mines or quarries (ad metallum) remained a standard penalty for
humble criminals. In Justinian's day the three great marble
quarries were still worked by convicts. In the fourth century the
corvee was also used in Egypt, villages being required to send
masons, carpenters and labourers to work in the alabaster quarries
at Alexandria for periods of from three months to a year.34
The organisation of mining is most obscure. Some mines were,
at any rate in the fourth century, worked by convict labour; we
hear of many Christians being sent to the copper mines of
Phaeno in southern Palestine. For the most part, however, the
miners (metallarii) were free men, bound to their place and trade by
a hereditary tie. Gold miners (and gold washers) had to pay to the
largitiones an annual quantum of gold per head, fixed in 365 at 8
scruples in Illyricum, in Asiana and Pontica at 7 scruples in 392:
in addition they had to sell the balance of what they produced to
the largitiones at 'competent prices' fixed by it, presumably paid in
denarii. Valentinian I hoped that these conditions would attract
volunteers into the industry, but his expectations were not fulfilled.
On the contrary, he and his brother had to conduct a regular hunt
for gold miners who had migrated and taken up agricultural work
on private and imperial estates, and during the invasion of Thrace
in 3 78 many of them, who were oppressed by the heavy demands of
the treasury, fled to the Goths, who welcomed them as expert
guides. Further measures to reclaim miners who had transferred
themselves to agriculture had to be taken in 424.ss
The important gold mining areas in the western Balkans were
under the control of the comes metallorum per Il!yricum, and under
him there were in the provinces of Macedonia, Inland Dacia, Upper
Moesia and Dardania procuratores metal!orum who collected their
dues from the miners: the office was filled by decurions supplied by
the city councils. No similar organisation is recorded for the ad-
jacent gold mining areas of the Thracian diocese, or elsewhere.
Some gold mining areas (meta!Jica loca) were state property, but
they might be acquired by private persons, who were bound to
carry on production. ss
Nothing is known of the organisation of the silver mines and
very little of copper and iron mining. Basil speaks of the iron
producing area of the Taurus, and asks the praetorian prefect,
Modestus, to reduce the contribution of iron from its inhabitants.
The Codes also mention a contribution of copper (con!atio aeris),

THE ROLE OF THE STATE
which might be commuted for gold at a rate of one solidus for .25
lb. This levy is spoken of as being paid by landowners, and from
another law it appears that landowners could change over, by the
government's permission, from the regular taxation of the annona
to 'the gold, copper and iron payment' (auraria aeraria atque fer-
raria praestatio ). It is difficult to put together any very coherent
picture from these scattered hints, but it would appear that the
mines were not large-scale enterprises manned by groups oflabour-
ers under the management of imperial officials or contractors, but
little shafts worked by independent miners, or perhaps small
groups. The state owned most of the gold mining areas and
monopolised all production of gold, but it only exacted a levy, no
doubt sufficient to meet its needs for the mints and arms factories,
on the owners of copper and iron mining districts.
37
The state thus manufactured in its own factories all the arms and
armour and a proportion of the uniforms required for the army and
the civil service. It produced the marble needed for its public
works from its own quarries and also levied a royalty of a tenth in
kind from private quarries. It obtained the gold (and probably the
silver) required for the mints from its own mines, and levied in
kind from the owners of the metalliferous areas the copper and
iron needed for the mints and arms factories. In the late third and
the fourth centuries it obtained most of its remaining requirements
by levies in kind assessed on the land. It secured in this way not
only foodstuffs of all kinds, wheat, barley, meat, wine and oil, to
feed the troops, the civil service, the population of the capitals, .its
industrial employees and the personnel of the post, together w1th
the horses of the army and the horses, mules and oxen of the post;
but also these animals themselves, and the raw material for the
state factories, such as wool and flax for the weaving mills, and
charcoal for the mints and arms factories. Public works were also
built and repaired by levies of material and labour assessed on the
land. Among the munera to which landowners were are
included the prov1s1on of craftsmen and labourers, the burmng of
lime and the supply of timber.
38
These levies did not necessarily eliminate the private trader. The
landowner did not always produce or possess the objects demanded
in tax, and in that case he had to buy them. Lactantius complains
that Galerius' regular indictions were so exorbitant that landowners
had no crops left to sell, to obtain the money wherewith to buy the
gold and garments required by his special levies for the vicennalia.
For practical convenience also certain levies were commuted: the
collectors could not levy horses or uniforms in fractions from
smallholders, and preferred to exact money payments and buy
them from dealers. The role of the merchants must however have
been greatly reduced by the levy system, and the contractor
eliminated by the corvee. 39
As from the late fourth century onwards levies in kind were
progressively commuted for gold, and for issues in kind were
substituted gold payments, the private trader must have gained
by the c.hange. Civil servants and soldiers when they received a
cash uniform allowance must have bought their clothes from
private dealers, and. in s'? far as their annona and capitus were paid
m gold, they must likew1se have bought their foocf on the market.
and Constantinople was, however, always
lev1ed m kind, and m the Eastern empire a sufficient proportion
of the land tax was generally paid in kind to supply rations for
the field army at any rate. Moreover, when the government
.foodstuffs it resorted to compulsory purchase
(coemP.tto, a.wwvrJ) direct from landowners, the price of the
supplies bemg deducted from thett gold tax, or, if it exceeded the
an:ount of their tax, paid in cash. According to a law of Anastasius
this procedure was to be used only in emergencies and required
special imperial authorization except in the diocese of Thrace.
In the West, where the taxes had by the middle of the fifth
century been entirely commuted to gold, coemptio was regularly
to obtain supplies; it is attested in Italy both under
TheoderJc and after the reconquest under Justinian. Supplies
were compulsorily purchased from the merchants of
the provmce in add!tion to the amounts bought from
landowners: this was regular m Thrace. In some provinces of
(Apulia and Calabria) under Justinian the landowners
pa1d a surtax (superindicticium) to be relieved of the burden of
coemptio, and all the supplies required were compulsorily pur-
chased from the local merchants. The merchants concerned are
clearly not importers or exporters, but dealers who bought corn
wine, oil or meat from the landowners and peasants for local sale.4o
Many large landowners, great senators and the major churches
followed the example of the government on a smaller scale'
supplying. some of their needs from their own estates. According
to Ol:rmp10d'?rus. Roman senators took approximately a quarter
of the1r rents m kind-corn, wine and other agricultural produce:
we .possess a l7tter from of !hem, Lauricius, formerly prae-
posttus cuktcult of Hononus, directing the agent of his Sicilian
estates 1f a ship can be found which is by good luck sailing for
PRIVATE TRAN,SPOR T
the port of Ravenna at a suitable date, dispatch the produce for
the requirements of our house there, and if it happens that you do
not find one which is coming to Ravenna, it should be sent to the
City (Rome) and stored in our granary'. The church of Ravenna
obtained from a group of estates in the neighbourhood (one was
at Patavium) dues in pork (3,76o lb.), honey (3,460 lb.), geese
(numbers lost), fowls (888), chickens (266) and eggs (8,88o);
these were allotted to the bishop for hospitality. Gregory the
Great obtained the bulk of the corn needed for feeding the Roman
poor from the Sicilian estates of the patrimony of Peter (by
purchase from the tenants), and cut timber from the south Italian
estates to roof a church in Rome. Bertram, bishop of Cenomani,
left to his church a pine wood near Burdigala which he had bought
together with a pitch works and its hands, so that pitch could be
annually delivered to Cenomani for the use of the church. Most
landiords seem, like Lauricius, to have relied on commercial
shippers to transport their goods, but the church of Alexandria
operated not only a fleet of Nile boats, but a small flotilla of
seagoing ships, for exporting the surplus corn from its estates
and importing its needs from abroad such as timber. This tendency
of great landlords to supply their basic needs from their own
estates must have diminished the trade in foodstuffs and other
raw materials, but for luxuries and for manufactured goods in
general the wealthy probably depended on the commercial mar-
ket.41
The state, and to a lesser extent great landlords, thus cut a
considerable sector out of the market by supplying their own needs
directly. In what remained of the market private commerce was
hampered by two important factors, the high cost and slowness
of transport and the low purchasing power of the mass of the
population.
Diocletian's tariff of prices gives us accurate information on the
cost of transport. The authorised charge per mile for a wagon
load of I ,200 lbs. is 20 denarii, for a camel load of 6oo lbs. 8 denarii,
for a donkey load 4 denarii. A modius of wheat, which is priced
at roo denarii, weighs 20 lbs., so that a wagon would carry 6o
modii and a camel 30. A wagon load of wheat, therefore, costing
6,ooo denarii, would be doubled in price by a journey of 300 miles,
a camel load by a journey of 375 miles. Maritime rates are very
much cheaper, especially for long journeys. The charge per
modius from Alexandria to Rome, some 1,250 miles, is r6 denarii,
from Alexandria to Byzantium 12; the highest rate quoted, from
Syria to Lusitania, is about 26 denarii. It was cheaper to ship
grain from one end of the Mediterranean to the other than to
cart it 75 miles. Against this must be set the risk, very considerable
in ancient conditions, of total or partial loss by shipwreck or
jettison and of spoiling by sea water. 42 .
Pack camels and donkeys move at about a man's walking pace,
oxen at about two miles an hour. Land transport was therefore
very slow. Sea transport under favourable weather conditions
was much faster, but contrary winds might cause much delay-
ancient ships could not beat against the wind-and storms might
compel long waits in harbour. Numerous accounts of voyages
illustrate the vagaries of sea travel. Sulpicius Severus' friend
Postumianus sailed from Narbo to Carthage in five days, a good
run, but on the voyage from Carthage to Alexandria was held up
in the Syrtis by bad weather for a week and took another week
to make Alexandria. For his return he found a ship bound with
a cargo for Narbo, and reached Massilia in thirty days. Gregory of
Nazianzus was unwise enough to take a passage on an Aeginetan
ship from Alexandria to Greece in the winter season and was
involved in a bad storm from which they took shelter in Rhodes.
Mark the deacon undertook many voyages for Porphyry, bishop
of Gaza. He sailed in thirteen days from Ascalon to Thessalonica
to settle up Porphyry's estate and returned in twelve, both good
runs. Then he sailed to Constantinople to deliver a letter to John
Chrystostom, taking twenty days: his return voyage was much
speedier, ten days only. Later he accompanied a party of bishops
to Constantinople. They embarked at Caesarea, arrived at Rhodes
in ten days, and at Constantinople in another ten: the return voyage
was again much quicker, only five days to Rhodes, and despite
a storm only another six to Maiuma, the port of Gaza.43
Synesius gives a tragi-comic account of a dreadful passage he
endured from Alexandria to Ptolemais. It was a small boat with
only twelve hands; the captain and half the crew were Jews.
The captain was heavily in debt and had sold all the spare gear,
leaving only one sail and one anchor, and the crew were all cripples.
Nevertheless he carried fifty passengers, including a number of
soldiers and about fifteen women; a part of the deck was screened
off with an old sail for their accommodation. In the afternoon a
storm blew up, but as it was Friday, no sooner did the sun set,
than the pious captain abandoned the tiller and despite protests
and threats refused to break the Sabbath till half way through the
night, when, remarking gloomily, 'We are clearly in danger of
death and the Law permits it', he resumed the helm, and managed

PRIVATE TRf'NSPOR T
next morning to put in on the desert shore. Mter waiting two
days for the storm to abate they put out again, but after two days'
run were becalmed. They then ran into another storm which
broke their mast, and ran aground in a desolate spot, whence a
local fisherman piloted them to a sheltered but equally desolate bay.
They had by now run out of provisions and had to catch fish to
assuage their hunger. All these adventures occurred on a coasting
voyage ofless than 6oo miles. 44
It must be remembered, moreover, that during the winter
season navigation was normally suspended. Vegetius declares
that the seas were absolutely closed for the four months from
I I November to ro March, and were very dangerous for all the
seven months from 22 September to 27 May. The two years'
period allowed to navicularii for the return voyage from Alexandria
to Constantinople shows how incalculable were the hazards of the
sea and what very long delays they might sometimes impose. In
these circumstances perishable goods could not be objects of
long-distance trade.45
Merchant ships varied greatly in capacity. The imperial govern-
ment thought it worth while to charter ships of as small a capacity
as 2,ooo modii for the transport of annona from Egypt to Constan-
tinople, which implies that such tiny boats of less than I 5 tons
(deadweight) must have been quite common. Under the Principate
a minimum tonnage of Io,ooo modii was required for ships in the
regular service of the annona and a law of V alens suggests that this
rule still applied in the fourth century. According to Procopius
the fleet assembled to convey Belisarius' army to Africa contained
no ship under 3 ,ooo medimni (Thucydidean Greek for I 8,ooo modii
or about I 20 tons), while the largest, in our text, were rated at
jo,ooo medimni; this figure is however certainly. corrupt-a ship
of this capacity would have been half as large agam as the monster
ships specially built to carry obelisks-and should perhaps be
5 ,ooo (3o,ooo modii). One of the corn ships belonging to the
church of Alexandria is said to have been of two myriads ( 2o,ooo
modii or about I30 tons), and John Moschus speaks of a ship of
three and a half myriads (3 j,ooo modii or about 230 tons) as being
unusually large: the shipper who built it was unable to launch it
though he put 300 men on to. the job. Elsewhere ~ e r e o r d ~ ~ s
exceptional a ship of five mynads (3 30 tons deadwetght). Thts 1s
the largest vessel of which we have reliable record.
46
Since cartage was so very expensive inland waterways were
greatly favoured for heavy transport. The importance of Egypt
to the corn supply lay not only in its fertile and regularly watered
soil, but in the fact that no part of the country lay far from the
y
Nile or a navigable canal. The establishment of the limes along
the Rhine and the Danube was probably dictated as much by
logistics as by strategical considerations. In the fourth century
the army of the Rhine was supplied by sea and river from Britain,
and in the sixth centurv the army of the lower Danube was
evidently supplied from maritime provinces of the Mediterranean via
the Bosphorus: this explains the curious group of provinces-Lower
Moesia and Scythia on the one hand, the Islands, Caria and Cyprus
on the other-which Justinian placed under the quaestor exercitus,
who was quartermaster of the lower Danube limes. The Upper Dan-
ube frontier, because it was not easily accessible by water, evidently
presented great difficulties of supply. Two units under the dux of
Raetia were converted into supply trains, and when exemptions from
furnishing animals for the post were granted, the requirements of the
Raetian limes and Illyrian expeditions were expressly excepted.
47
Grain seems never to have been carted for any considerable
distance except by the imperial government, which did not have
to count the cost. Commercially the grain trade did not pay by
land. In big towns the price of grain was, it is true, substantially
higher than in small, because it had to be carried from greater
distances. According to Julian wheat was normally sold at Antioch
I 5 modii to the solidus, which was twice the general rate prevailing
in Egypt or Mrica; he no doubt exaggerated in order to magnify
his own achievement in selling wheat at this figure during a
shortage, but his statement implies that wheat not infrequently
reached this figure in Antioch. But even the higher prices pre-
vailing in the big towns did not attract corn from far. J ulian
prided himself on having got grain during a famine to Antioch,
presumably with the aid of the cursus publicus, from Hierapolis,
which is not much over Ioo miles away, and even from Chalcis,
at about half that distance, and he eventually had to fall back on
Egyptian supplies. In an inland town, such as Caesarea of Cappa-
docia, there was little hope if the local crops failed: as Gregory of
Nazianzus explains, 'coastal cities support such shortages without
much difficulty, as they can dispose of their own products and
receive supplies by sea; for us inland our surpluses are unprofitable
and our scarcities irremediable, as we have no means of disposing
of what we have or of importing what we lack'. It was for this
reason that towns had so often to subsidise the import of corn;
if there was a local shortage, and corn had to be imported from
farther afield, the price had to be artificially reduced.48

OBJECTS QF TRADE 845
Conversely, inland regions could not dispose of their surplus
corn. Both Procopius and John Lydus complain that when
Justinian abolished the cursus publicus in various parts-John
specifies the diocese of Asia-and the government ceased to buy
accept it as tax, 'the unsold crops rotted on the estates,
As1a bemg almost all arable, and the taxpayer was ruined when
the tax collectors demanded gold instead of crops, since he could
not sell his crops, living far from the sea'. The situation became
even worse, he laments, when the military units stationed in the
area were moved elsewhere, with the result that 'the taxes were
converted to gold, and the crops were ploughed in year by
year'.
49
Long-distance trade in corn was thus commercially profitable
only when the corn was grown in areas close to a port or inland
waterway, and the market was a large town which 1ay on the sea
or on a navigable river. Wine and oil, being more valuable in
proportion to bulk, probably more imJ?ortant objects
of trade. Special vmtag.es which comm.anded a price were
worth. transportmg, and some.umes ordinary wine was
carried some distance. overland. In sixth century Cappadocians,
whose country was Ill fitted for vlt!culture, brought wine in bulk
from Syria. Africa was still exporting large quantities of oil when
the Arabs conquered it in the seventh century, and oil was still
being imported to Marseilles in the sixth. 50
Fruit and vegetables could not travel far owing to the slowness
of transport, and big towns seem to have been supplied from their
immediate neighbourhood. At Constantinople there was an
important guild of market gardeners, who leased suburban estates
for the cultivation of vegetables and fruit trees. Justinian had to
legislate against their sharp practices: they took over the existing
stock at a valuation, and on surrendering the lease were compen-
sated for the stock which they left and for improvements, such as
manuring or planting trees. As the valuers were members of the
guild, landlords always found that the initial valuation was very
low and the final one very high. 51
Meat could only be transported on the hoof or salted; salt meat
was conveyed considerable distances by the government for the
use of the troops, and pigs were driven on the hoof from Lucania
and cattle from Bruttium to supply the Roman people with pork
and beef-losing some I 5% or 2o% of their weight on the journey.
But this was again a government enterprise: we hear of no large-
scale private trade in meat. There is one record of long-distance
trade in fish. In 6r 5 Bertram, bishop of Cenomani, bequeathed
his house at Burdigala to a nephew but stipulated that he must
give lodging to the agents of the church of Cenomani who were
sent to Burdigala 'pro piscibus ad negotiandum'.
62
Some of the raw materials of industry must have been transported
over considerable distances. Iron and copper, for instance, were
universally needed, and were mined in limited only. H_igh
grade wools, being both easily portable and expens1ye,
were also probably carried long distances. The tariff of
prices Atrebatic wool (from northern Gaul) at zoo denaru the
pound, Tarentine (from Apulia) at 175, Laodicene (from Phrygia)
at r 50 and Asturian at roo. As against this, 'best medium wool'
is tariffed at jo denarii and 'other wool' at Zj. It would clearly be
worth while for a merchant to carry the superior wools to distant
markets by pack animal.
53
.
The imperial government carted valuable :narbles considerable
distances regardless of cost, and so also did wealthy senators,
though they preferred to make illicit use the public post. Big
timber had also to be conveyed over long distances. Gregory the
Great requiring long beams for the church of Peter and Paul,
the subdeacon Sabinus, the rector of the patrimony in
those parts, to fell twenty trees in Bruttium. Hauling them to
the sea was a formidable undertaking, and Gregory asked his
namesake the ex-prefect, who leased land in the neighbourhood
from the church, the dux Arogis, who also owned estates in the
area and the local bishop, Stephanus, all to furnish men and oxen.
Egypt, which was destitute of large trees, always had to import
timber. Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria, asked Gregory for
timber, offering to pay for it, an offer which was politely refused.
He later complained that the timber sent was too short, but Gregory
answered that the ship sent to fetch it was too small. It is not
known if Eulogius ever got his long beams, as in his last letter
on the subject Gregory explains that the ship will not take the
timber he had had felled and that he is reluctant to saw it up.
54
The laws allude to the owners of private quarries transporting
marble by sea and selling it; senators were in 376 exempted from
customs dues on the marble that they cut from their own quarries.
But there is no evidence of any regular trade in building stone
or timber. For ordinary purposes local stone or brick was used,
and if timber was lacking, builders made do without it. In one
of his letters Gregory of Nyssa describes a chapel he has planned.
It was an ambitious structure, an octagon with four rectangular
chambers and four apses projecting from it, and an inner colonnade
of eight columns. He asks a friend to send him some masons
skilled in vaulting, and explains apologetically: 'the scarcity of
timber induces me to roof the whole building in stone, because

OBJECTS OF TRADE
there is no building timber in these parts.' And, he adds, skilled
freemasons are no use to him, for the local materials are brick and
odd stones. In the timberless area south of Damascus buildings
were not only roofed with beams of basalt; even doors and
windows were made of basalt slabs. 5
5
Manufactured articles would bear the cost of transport better,
being more valuable in proportion to their bulk and weight,
but here we must consider the second factor unfavourable to trade,
the poverty of the market. The vast majority of the population of
the empire were peasants, whose standard of living was low and
whose needs were simple. The working classes in the towns seem
to have been as poor, to judge by the difficulty they had in paying
a solidus or two every four or five years for the collatio lustra!is.
This meant that the global demand for manufactured goods was
very low. Trade in manufactured goods was even more restricted,
for the mass of the population could afford only the cheapest and
simplest articles, and these were locally produced.
Humble urban craftsmen supplied most of the basic needs of
the towns and of the immediately surrounding areas, and where
cities were thickly set they probably provided the countryside
with manufactured goods. But where cities were widely spaced and
their territories large, the needs of outlying villages were supplied
by the rural potter and smith, whom Valentinian I declared immune
from the collatio lustralis, and we may add, by the rural weaver.
Libanius in his panegyric on Antioch boasts that in its territory
were 'many large and populous villages, with larger populations
than not a few cities, which have craftsmen as in towns, and ex-
change their products with one another through fairs' .
56
The large village of Aphrodito in the territory of Antaeopolis
had a substantial number of craftsmen. A petition to Justinian is
signed first by the clergy, eleven priests and a deacon, then by
twenty-two principal farmers (unjroee,;), two notaries, the headman
of the village, the tax collector and his assistant, and by six head"
men of guilds, including the smiths, carpenters, weavers, fullers
and boatbuilders and also a wine merchant. A contemporary
tax list shows in addition to about one hundred names with no
trade specified, presumably peasant proprietors, nine bakers,
six butchers, five greengrocers, two millers, three beekeepers,
a dyer, eight fullers, four or five linen weavers, a group of wool
weavers, three tailors, a group of shoemakers, one potter, three
carpenters and two boatbuilders, a group of coppersmiths and
five goldsmiths, not to speak of a notary, a letter writer and a
barber. The potter must have had quite a big business and em-
ployed assistants, for he paid 2,400 wine jars a year as rent for
one-third of a pottery to the proprietors, two ladies; he pre-
sumably also leased the other two-thirds from the monastery into
whose hands they had passed. 57
A striking example of the dispersal of industry is afforded by
the weaving trade. Weaving was a basic and important industry,
for even the poorest had to possess some clothes and renew them
at intervals, and little clothing was home made. There was some
domestic weaving in large households. Pope Pelagius, giving
instructions on which slaves are to be picked from an estate part
of which had accrued to the church, specified that domestic
servants and craftsmen, 'men perhaps who could be useful for
wool weaving', are to be rejected in favour of agricultural slaves.
Such domestic weaving was, however, not important, and the
poor generally bought their clothes from a professional weaver.
This point is illustrated by an anecdote told by Augustine.
Florentius, a poor cobbler of Hippo, lost his one and only casu/a,
and in his distress prayed the Twenty Martyrs to succour him.
As he prayed small boys jeered at him, 'as if he had asked the
Martyrs for 50 folies each wherewith to buy clothes'. He was not
granted the I,ooo folies which a casu/a would, it is to be inferred,
have cost him, but on the sea shore he found a large fish, which he
sold to a cook for 300 folies. With the money he planned 'to buy
wool so that his wife could make up something for him to wear as
best she could'. Even a poor cobbler, it would appear, normally
bought his clothes ready made.ss
Clothes are easily portable objects, even more portable than
the raw materials out of which they are made, and here if anywhere
large-scale manufacture and trade might seem to have been
practicable and profitable. The Diocletianic tariff, however,
suggests that it was only high quality garments whose production
was concentrated in a few towns, whence they were .exported to
all parts of the empire. The facts are most clearly set out with
regard to linen garments. Here five local brands are recognised,
of which the most expensive is the Scythopolitan, next the Tarsian,
then the Byblian, then the Laodicene, and finally what is called
the Tarsian Alexandrian, which means fabrics of Tarsian style
produced at Alexandria. Each of these brands is divided into
three grades (jormae). Thus a shirt (an7/J) from Scythopolis cost
7 ,ooo, 6,ooo or 5 ,ooo denarii according to its grade, while one
from Alexandria cost 4,ooo, 3 ,ooo or 2,ooo. As compared with
these named brands, a military shirt, which would have been
substantial if plain, cost according to grade I, 5 oo, I ,2 5o or I ,ooo,
and shirts 'of rough linen for the use of commoners and slaves'
half these prices.59

OBJECTS 0!' TRADE
There are similar scales for men's (women's) dalmatics, which
range from Io,ooo (n,ooo), to 2,ooo (3,ooo) in the named brands,
whereas 'those which are inferior to the above mentioned third
grade but are manufactured in more places' are priced at 2, 5 oo
to I,5oo (I75o), and those 'for the use of commoners and slaves'
at 8oo (I,ooo) to 500 (6oo). Very similar ranges of prices are quoted
for half a dozen other garments. Other towns specialised in linen
mattresses and bolsters. Antinoopolis and Tralles produced the
best only, at 2,750 denarii, Damascus and Cyprus three grades at
I,750, I,250 and 8oo: below these named brands come inferior
grades at 6oo, 5 oo and 400, and those 'for the use of commoners
and slaves' at 350, 300 and 250.
60
It will thus be seen that not only rough clothes, worn by the
working classes, but good plain garments at two or three times
the price were produced at a large number of places. The famous
weaving cities produced only superior garments; even a third-
grade Alexandrian imitation of a Tarsian garment was nearly
always priced higher than a first-grade garment made elsewhere,
and first-grade Scythopolitan fabrics were priced at about four
times as much.
The figures for woollen garments are less systematically set out
and have not been so well preserved. A 'best indictional cloak'
(xJ.ap,vc;), which would have been a good serviceable article, is
priced at 4,ooo denarii, but a Dardanian single cloak at 7 ,ooo, and
a double one at I 2, 5 oo. There was a large range of locally named
birri, of which the Nervian was the dearest (the actual price is lost).
There follow the Taurogastric (of unknown provenance) and
imitations of Nervian made at Laodicea of Phrygia, both priced
at Io,ooo, Noric and Ripensian at 8,ooo, those from Britain,
Melitomagus and the Argolid at 6,ooo, Laodicene at 4, 5 oo,
Canusian at 4,ooo, Numidian at 3,ooo, Achaean and Phrygian at
z,ooo and African at I, 5 oo. Fibulatoria also show a wide range of
prices from Raetic at 12,5 oo, through those of Treviri and
Poetovio at 8,ooo and 5 ,ooo, to African at z,ooo, while saga show
even greater contrasts; Gallic garments from Ambiani and Bi-
turiges cost 8,ooo, African only 5 oo. Most of these garments
would seem to be of the luxury class, but the African may well
have been cheap enough to command a wide market.
6
l
That good plain weaving was very widely practised is suggested
by the general levies of garments made for uniforms in every
province and city of the empire and assessed like the annona on
the land, for these garments had to be of decent quality, as the
prices of 'military' shirts and 'indictional' cloaks show. Not every
village and landowner, it is true, produced garments woven on the
spot: many found it more convenient to buy their quota, or com-
mute their obligation, leaving the collector for the city to buy
the garments. But the idea of such a general levy would hardly
have occurred to the government unless most areas produced the
goods required. Moreover in the diocese of Oriens at any rate
the levy was a compulsory purchase, and the government in the
early fourth entury paid prices according to Diocletian's tariff:
thus the village of Caranis in Egypt in 3 14 received 24,ooo denarii
for 24 shirts (auxaew; they were evidently of the third grade)
and ro,ooo denarii for 8 cloaks (naJ.J.ta). Such a system of com-
pulsory purchase at prices which had originally been fair would
have been a very strange procedure if the articles purchased had
not been local products. 62
The evidence thus far suggests that there was little long-distance
trade in clothes except in expensive high-grade garments which
were the speciality of a few famous weaving towns. There is,
however, one indication that cheap clothes sometimes travelled
considerable distances. Where Pinianus adopted the ascetic life he
at first wore sackcloth, but his wife Melania saw that he found this
too irritating and persuaded him to buy 'natural coloured Antio-
chenes' (' Avuoxlma louixeoa), which cost only one solidus (or
according to the Latin version only two tremisses). It would seem
then that at Rome cheap workmen's clothes, probably of linen,
were imported from Antioch; and it may be conjectured that
woollen garments of similar cheap grades were imported from
Africa. There probably was . then a market for cheap textiles in
the largest cities, and a long-distance trade to supply them.
63
There was also, as we have seen, some seaborne trade in wheat
(and also beans), wine and oil to supply the larger maritime
towns. Apart from this the objects of trade were luxury or semi-
luxury articles for which the rich and well-to-do were prepared
to pay a price which would cover the cost of transport. They
included high quality textiles, the linens and woollens which were
the specialities of famous weaving towns, and also silk, which was
imported from China regardless of cost and fetched fantastic
prices; engraved silver tableware and superior glassware; jewellery
and perfumes and unguents, many of these of oriental origin.
Among foodstuffs choice brands of wine travelled far; the sweet
wines of Gaza were imported into Ostrogothic Italy, Visigothic
Spain and Merovingian Gaul. Exotic spices were also much in
demand, notably pepper, which after its long journey from Malabar
fetched very high prices; Rome must have held large stocks to be
able to pay 3 ,ooo lb. to Alaric in 408 as part of the ransom of
the city.
64

THE SLA VB TRADE 8ji
There remains the slave trade. Slaves, in so far as they were
objects of commerce, may be reckoned as luxury articles, for they
were expensive and they were in the main purchased as personal
servants. Slaves were, it is true, used on a considerable scale in
some areas for agriculture, but such slaves were almost always
homeborn. The imperial weaving mills and dyeworks, the mints
and the postal service were also manned by slaves, but these
again were hereditary groups, and the government neither bought
nor sold its workers. Slaves were also sometimes used in private
industrial establishments, but not, it would seem, on any large
scale. They were more generally employed in posts of confidence,
as managers (actores and procuratores) by landowners and as clerks
and agents by business men. But the vast majority
were personal and domestic servants.
65
Rich senators kept vast households, if the denunciations of
moralists are to be believed. What is more important, slaves were
regarded almost as an essential of life by persons of relatively
modest means. In his petition to the Council of Chalcedon
Athanasius, the nephew of the late patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril,
draws a pitiful picture of how Cyril's successor Dioscorus has
reduced him to the utmost penury, so that he is forced to beg his
bread for himself and the two or three slaves that remain to him.
Libanius, urging the council of Antioch to augment the stipends
of his four assistant lecturers, represents them as utterly poverty-
stricken on their present scales; they do not marry if they are
prudent, they have to live in lodgings like cobblers, they owe
money to their bakers and have to sell their wives' trinkets to pay
the bill. As a climax Libanius declares that they can afford two
or three slaves only, who, not belonging to a proper establishment,
are insolent to their masters. Slaves seem to have been a regular
institution in the army, in which there were exceptionally good
opportunities for acquiring them cheap. A law of Constantine
suggests that every non-commissioned officer, even of the lowest
grade of circitor, had his slave batman, and Sulpicius Severus
declares that Martin as a private-in the guards, it is true-was so
ascetic that he contented himself with one slave only. Aristocratic
hermits and monks who kept only a slave or two to look after
them were praised for their self-denial.
66
Many domestic slaves, in large households most no doubt,
were home bred, but one category had to be bought. Castration
was strictly prohibited within the bounds of the empire. The
law was naturally sometimes broken, but in general eunuchs, who
were considered essential in all really high-class households, were
imported from abroad, mainly from Persia, Armenia and other
8j2 INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT
Caucasian lands. They were for the most part the product of
piracy, kidnapping and tribal wars. In Justinian's time most
eunuchs came from the barbarous and still pagan tribe of the
Abasgi on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. Their kings made a
regular business of seizing the handsomest boys among their
subjects and selling them to dealers, killing their parents to elitni-
nate danger of future vengeance. We are not told what alternative
source of supply was found when Justinian converted the Abasgi
to Christianity and suppressed the eunuch trade with the monarchy,
and it may be that his pious action stimulated the increase in the
illicit castration of Roman subjects which shocked the old emperor
in 55 8.67
Eunuchs had a high scarcity value. The casualty rate in castra-
tion was, owing to pritnitive surgical methods, enormous: according
to information subtnitted to Justinian out of ninety victims only
three survived. Justinian for purposes of valuation in certain legal
cases put their price at 30 solidi for a boy under ro, 50 for an
untrained adult, and 70 for a trained adult. But ordinary slaves
were by no means cheap. Justinian's figures are ro solidi for a
child under Io, 20 for an unskilled man or woman, and 30 for a
man or woman skilled in any craft; a trained clerk was valued at 5o
and a doctor at 6o. The few recorded prices confirm these valua-
tions. A Gaulish boy aged I4 was sold at Ascalon in 3 59 for
I 8 solidi from one soldier to another. In the early fifth century
a man who sold himself to a pair of actors realised 20 solidi, while
in the early seventh another, an African collector of customs who
was sold to a Jerusalem silverstnith, fetched as much as 30 solidi;
and this though he was sold incognito not as a clerk but as a
general houseboy, who did washing and cooking and waited at
table. It is significant also that Roman senators preferred to pay
aurum tironicum at 5 lb. of silver or 2 5 solidi per man rather than
part with their domestic slaves and coloni as recruits. Some lower
are recorded. Retnigius, bishop of Rheitns, mentions in his
will that he had bought a man named Friaredus for I4 solidi
'to prevent his being killed': in the circumstances he was no doubt
sold off cheap. The Council of Matisco in 5 83 ordained that Jews
must surrender their Christian slaves, but compensated them at
the rate of I 2 solidi each: the compensation in this case is not
likely to have been generous. In a late fifth century African
document a-six-year old boy is sold for one solidus and 700 folies
to 3 solidi in all). At Hermopolis 4 solidi
were pa1d m the s1xth century for a little black girl, 'Atalous by
name, renamed by you (the purchaser) Eutychia, about I2 years
of age more or less, an Aloan by race'. 68
THE SLAVE- TRADE
The main lawful source of slaves for the market was the bar-
barians beyond the frontiers. Prisoners of war did not perhaps
often come on the market, as the government preferred to enrol
them in the army, or settle them on the land as laeti or sell or grant
them to landowners as coloni, in which status they would still,
with their descendants, be liable to military service. But no doubt
soldiers often managed to secure prisoners for themselves, and
kidnapping and intertribal wars produced a regular flow of
barbarian slaves into the empire. Thetnistius denounces the
tribunes and praepositi of the frontier forces as being more interested
in the slave trade than in their military duties, and Amtnianus
vividly describes how the comes and the dux on the lower Danube
in 378 exploited the fatnine among the imtnigrant Goths, buying
their children for a mere song, and selling them all over Thrace.
Prices were substantially lower in the frontier areas than in Italy.
Symmachus at Rome thought it worth while to ask Flavian, the
praetorian prefect of Italy, then presumably in Illyricum, to buy
him twenty stable boys, 'since on the frontier slaves are easy to
come by and the price is usually tolerable'.
69
This source was supplemented in various illegal or quasi legal
ways. In the strict theory of Roman law the liberty of a Roman
citizen was on Roman territory inalienable; he could only become
a slave if he were taken beyond the frontiers, and on returning to
Roman territory he automatically reacquired his liberty by
postliminium. There were, however, a number of loopholes in the
law. If parents exposed their children they were debarred from
later reclaitning them, and those who brought up foundlings
could treat them as slaves, until Justinian altered the law and made
foundlings free persons. Parents could also sell newborn infants
(sanguinolenti), but in this case under a law of Constantine had the
right of redeetning them later for a fair price. A Visigothic law
fixed this at one solidus for each year of their age up to ten, this
being deemed the cost of feeding them; ten was the maximum,
it being held that after ten the children would have earned their
keep by their services.7o
Parents were forbidden to sell older children or to pledge them
for debt, but it is abundantly clear that despite the law they fre-
quently did so. Constantine admitted as much in granting allow-
ances of food and clothing to poor parents, to prevent their selling
their children. It is a regular complaint that poor craftsmen and
shopkeepers had to sell their children to pay the chrysargyron.
How little the law was regarded is shown by a constitution of
Valentinian Ill which records that during a fatnine in Italy in 4 5o
large numbers of people had been driven to sell their children and
relatives and specially enacts that they may recover their freedom
on repaying the purchasers the price received plus 2o%; the
typical prices cited, five or ten solidi, suggest that slaves had
been obtainable at bargain prices owing to the crisis. Rufinus
gives a specific case of a taxpayer who owed 300 solidi to the
treasury and had to sell his three children in his attempt to raise
this sum, while in a petition from Egypt dated 5 69 Martha records
that her father Menas, having fallen into utter poverty, had
pledged her sister for one solidus, and that she had by her trade
as a saltfish seller saved up half a solidus to redeem her.7
1
Adults who allowed themselves to be sold did not in strict law
prejudice their freedom, but if a person over twenty not only
acquiesced in such a transaction but received a part of the price
for himself, he became a slave. We know of a few self-sales, but
they were made for religious motives; more commonly the trans-
action was no doubt due to extreme poverty or to debt.72
Many thousands of Roman citizens were captured by barbarian
raiders from the frontier provinces, and later from the heart of
the empire, when the barbarians broke through the defensive ring.
Very many such prisoners were redeemed by their relatives and
friends, or by the church; bishops were allowed to pawn or sell
the church plate for this charitable purpose, and Justinian even
permitted the churches of Moesia, which were particularly hard
pressed, to alienate real property. But large numbers were sold
back into the empire as slaves. Such persons did not technically
forfeit their free status but their purchasers could hold them as
slaves in pledge until they could refund the price which had been
paid for them, either by realising their property or by the help of
friends or relatives. Many who had no resources and were sold
far from their homes must have fallen into slavery permanently,
and in 408 Honorius introduced a more merciful rule that such
persons could redeem themselves by five years' service. Even so
it is probable that many failed to assert their rights. Theodoret
tells a romantic story of a little girl, Maria, who was captured by
the Vandals in Africa and sold by them to merchants who sold her
in Cyrrhus, together with a faithful slave of her family. The slave
told the story, and the local garrison raised a subscription, bought
her from her owner and entrusted her to Theodoret. Ten months
later news came through that her father Eudaemon was not only
alive but held office in the West, and Theodoret arranged for her
repatriation. Here all ended happily, but there must have been
many helpless persons, especially children, who were not so
lucky.
73
Despite the many sources from which they were drawn it would
THE PATTERN OF TRADE
8jj
seem that demand exceeded supply. Slaves were dear in the
interior of the empire, though relatively cheap on the frontiers:
it would seem that the local market absorbed most near the source
of supply. Another indication of the shortage of slaves is the
common use of indentured free persons instead of slaves as
personal servants. We have a number of contracts of service
(naeapovf)) from Egypt, in which a free person indentures himself-
or is indentured by his parents-to serve for a term of years,
specifying sometimes in great detail what board or wages, clothes
and perquisites he is to receive, as-to quote an unusually
outspoken document- 'a resident domestic slave boy'. Such
contracts are often made in consideration of a loan or advance of
wages.
74
There were certainly merchants who imported eunuchs and
other barbarian slaves and bought Roman captives from the
barbarians. Both the black girl Atalous and Maria of Carthage
had passed through the hands of slave merchants. In the late
sixth century there was a substantial slave trade from Gaul to Italy.
Many of the merchants were Jews and Pope Gregory was prepared
to tolerate their buying Christians-which was strictly against the
law-if they did so on commission on behalf of Christian pur-
chasers, or sold them within forty days .of their arrival in Italy.
Much of the traffic, however, was by pnvate treaty between one
owner and another. The total volume of the trade, catering as it
did normally for the wealthy and well-to-do, cannot have been
very large.
75
We may now attempt to draw some picture of the commercial
and industrial classes in the empire. In the larger villages, as we
have seen, whether those of freeholders or those <;:m the great
estates, there were craftsmen-potters, carpenters, smtths, weavers
and fullers-who sold their products direct to their customers,
and dealers in foodstuffs-bakers, butchers, beekeepers and
vegetable sellers. The villagers exchanged their products at rural
fairs, and at these they could buy from travelling merchants goods
not produced in the district, and sell to them local specialities
which would command a good price elsewhere. Theodoret tells
a story of such a fair at I ~ a e a large v ~ a g e in. Antiochene
territory about twenty-five miles from the c1ty, wh1ch attracted
merchants in large numbers from all parts: a merchant who had
sold all his stock and had his wallet full of gold was murdered as
he travelled away. Cassiodorus describes another fair, which
8j6 INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT
seems to have been on a rather larger scale, held on St. Cyprian's
day near Consilinum in Lucania. At its stalls could be bought the
products of Campania, Bruttium, Apulia and Calabria: it was a
notable cattle market, clothes of all kinds were on sale, and boys
and girls-the children of needy parents-could be purchased as
slaves. Here again local peasants had set upon the merchants as
they left and despoiled them. Apollonius the retired merchant
(&no neay1wrevrwv), who became a monk in the Nitrian desert,
was probably such a travelling merchant: knowing no craft
whereby he could keep himself, he bought a stock of medicines
and dainties, such as grapes, pomegranates, eggs and white bread;
and made his living by hawking them round the cells of sick
monks.
76
All peasants had to sell a part of their crops, if freeholders, to
buy such household necessities as they did not produce themselves
and to pay their money taxes, if tenants, to pay their rent (if not in
kind) as well. There were village merchants who bought the local
crops and carried them to town: a wine merchant is recorded at
Aphrodito and Theodoret tells of a certain Abraham, who, wishing
to convert a pagan village of freeholders, rented a house there and
set up as a merchant in walnuts, the principal (export) crop of the
place. There were also professional carriers, who owned pack
animals-donkeys, mules or camels-on which they carried
agricultural produce to the cities. Libanius protests against the
unfairness of pressing such men to carry builders' rubbish out of
the. city on their return journey. They were kept waiting all day,
the1r sacks were torn and made filthy with mud, and their beasts
worn out by the heavy loads.77
The smaller cities did not differ substantially from the larger
villages: they too served as markets for the produce of the sur-
rounding countryside, and their craftsmen supplied the needs of
the townsfolk and the neighbouring villages. The larger the city
the greater was the number and variety of the craftsmen and of the
dealers in foodstuffs, wholesale and retail, including corn merchants
who bought up and stored the crops and sold them to the local
retailers and bakers. Corn merchants and retailers are mentioned
at inland cities like Caesarea of Cappadocia, which neither exported
nor imported corn, and it was evidently from such local dealers
that compulsory purchases of corn were sometimes made by the
government. 78
of provinces and the other great cities,
t;mversJty towns hke Athens or Berytus, or centres of pilgrimage
hke Jerusalem, there would be dealers in high quality imported
goods and superior craftsmen, catering for both the local notables
THE PATTER!:! OF TRADE
and those of the province, and in some cases for students and
pilgrims. Some cities, where there were government arms or
clothing factories, or where high quality goods were prpduced
for export, like Scythopolis, Tarsus, Laodicea of Syria and Byblus
with their linens, or Mutina, Ambiani, Bituriges, Treviri or
Poetovio with their woollens, had a considerable industrial
population. Then there were the great ports which handled most
of the long-distance trade, usually, like Aries or Ephesus, at the
mouth of an important river, along which barges plied collecting
agricultural produce; and lesser ports which tapped a smaller area,
with their merchants, shipbuilders, sailors and dockers.
Finally, there were the great cities of the empire. Some of
these were important primarily as markets. An extreme case is
Rome. Here there was a large resident population of wealthy
senators and clergy, and a constant flow of visitors, students,
pilgrims, litigants, bishops attending councils, literary men giving
lectures; and to serve their needs merchants, artists, craftsmen and
shopkeepers, dockers, porters and labourers. There was a heavy
flow of imports to Rome, and a busy industry to cope with
local needs, but it was neither a commercial nor a manufacturing
city.
Constantinople seems to have been a rather similar city: Themis-
tius boasts that ships converged on the capital from Asia, Syria
and Egypt, bringing in the products of all quarters of the world,
but that the only cargo that they carried outward bound was
builders' rubbish. Antioch had its two armament factories, and
apparently produced cheap linens for export, but Libanius in his
great panegyric on the city has very little to say on either trade or
industry. He mentions that wine and oil were exported from
Antiochene territory, but he praises Seleucia as a port where
merchant ships congregated from Europe, Africa and Asia bringing
in their finest products, 'since the keen demand attracts merchants'
thoughts thither, so that through it we enjoy the products of
every land.'
79
Very different was Alexandria, which was not only an important
administrative centre, seat of the Augustal prefect, the comes
Aegypti, the praojectus annonae and the comes et rationa/is summarum
Aegypti with their staffs of officials and barristers; the residence of
a patriarch and his numerous clergy; a centre of pilgrimage with
its famous shrines of SS. Cosmas and Damian and S. Menas; a
university town, celebrated for its school of medicine. It was also
a great port, which handled not only the exports of Egypt but the
trade with Arabia, East Africa and India. It was also an important
industrial town, noted for its linens, its glassware, its papyrus,
which supplied the whole empire with writing material, and for
many luxury products, such as fine silverware and jewellery and
perfumes and unguents made up from oriental imports.
80
The lowest stratum of the urban population was formed by
the casual labourers, who were particularly numerous in the
building industry. In the fourth century labour for public works
was usually obtained by the corvee system, but the church and
private individuals, unless they received an imperial grant, must
always have employed hired labour, and by the latter part of the
fifth century the state had largely abandoned the corvee. The
labourers on a large job must have been a curious mixture if
John Moschus' stories are to be believed. Those employed by
Ephraem, the comes Orientis, in rebuilding Antioch after the
disastrous earthquake, included a bishop who found manual
labour more tolerable than the cares of his office. Isaurians are
also often mentioned among the building labourers at Antioch;
these poverty-stricken highlanders were apparently reduced to
earning their living by casual labour when they could no longer
practise brigandage. 81
When Anastasius was building the frontier fortress city of Dara,
which he had to do quickly in order to present the Persian govern-
ment with a fait accompli before they could object to the breach of
treaty, he collected a vast labour force from all quarters by offering
very high rates of pay, four carats a day for a man, and eight carats
for a man with a donkey. Normally rates were very much lower
than this. We hear of labourers in Egypt earning one carat a day,
and a monk who, aspiring to buy a beautifully bound copy of the New
Testament costing three solidi, took work as a labourer on a
cistern which John, the bishop of Jerusalem (5 r6-5 24), was building
got only 5 folies a day, which at the current rate of 210 folies
to the solidus works out at a little over half a carat. Even at this
rate, however, a man in full employment could earn 7 solidi a year,
about as much as a private soldier got. 82
Urban craftsmen and shopkeepers were universally organised
in guilds (collegia): they are commouly called guildsmen (collegiati)
in the Codes. The guilds were useful to the local and imperial
authorities for the collection of the chrysargyron and for the imposi-
tion of corvees and compulsory services of various kinds (munera).
Some of the services were for the benefit of the city and directed by
the civic authorities; in Majorian's words, the guildsmen had to
provide labour services for their native city in rotation under the
LABOURERS ANT;> CRAFTSMEN
direction of the curiale.r, and Honorius declares that owing to the
flight of the collegiati into the country 'the cities robbed of their
services have lost the splendour with which in old times they had
shone'. The nature of these services is rarely specified in the Codes.
The corporati of Alexandria had to dredge the river, and it is
probable that in \'V' estern cities the three guilds of the dendrofori,
centonarii and fabri had to provide a fire brigade, as they had under
the Principate. Libanius protests against the heavy corvees
imposed on the craftsmen and shopkeepers of Antioch, cleaning
the drains and re-erecting columns-work which they either had
to do themselves or hire labour to perform. 8
3
Other services were for the benefit of the imperial government,
chiefly in connection with the cursus publicus, A law of Valentinian
forbids peasants to be pressed into convoying animals (pro-
secutio animalium) and lays this burden on the city guilds, while
from Egypt we have nominations of townsmen to perform this
duty and also to serve as letter carriers on the cursus velox, and as
sailors on the public barges which conveyed the annona down the
Nile. Libanius also records that at Antioch the craftsmen and
shopkeepers -had to serve and maintain the equipment of the
hostelry attached to the local mansio of the cur sus publicus, supplying
the beds, tables and tableware and replacing breakages and losses,
and serving as cooks, cleaners and attendants. 8
4
The guilds were also useful to the local authorities for control-
ling prices and regulating trade practices for the benefit of the
customer-and might be used by their own members to promote
their own interests. From the early fourth century, when prices
were soaring owing to the rapid depreciation of the denarius, we
have a group of declarations by various guilds of Oxyrhynchus-the
bakers, brewers, oil sellers, honey dealers, pork butchers, fish-
mongers and coppersmiths-to the curator of the city, stating
month by month what prices they would charge. From the year
4 59 we possess a detailed agreement between the defensor of Sardis
and the local guild of builders. The latter undertake that their
members will not abandon work on a contract, provided that the
employer pays the wages mutually agreed, and that they will
supply a substitute for any member who wilfully fails to complete
a contract, and also, after a period of grace, for a member who is
unable to do so owing to sickness. They also guarantee to pay the
penalty stipulated in the contract if any member obstructs com-
pletion of a contract by another. A law of Zeno, dated 483, which
prohibits combinations between dealers to fix prices and between
builders and other craftsmen to refuse to work on contracts not
completed by their fellows, imposes a fine on the heads of the
z
86o INDUSTRY, TRADE AND TRANSPORT
guilds concerned. The bakers were the guild which most often
came into conflict with the authorities. Libanius often protests
against the way in which the governor or civic magistrates would
fix the price of bread low during a shortage and flog bakers who
exceeded it.
85
Of the structure of industry we know very little. There were
some slave establishments owned by well-to-do proprietors.
When Libanius' friend Thalassius was refused admission to the
senate of Constantinople on the ground that he was cutler,
Libanius indignantly explained that he was no mere art:Jsan, but
like Demosthenes owned a factory of slave craftsmen. A law of
3 8 3 which permitted the cities of Moesia to enrol on the councils
commoners whose wealth consisted in slaves must refer to similar
establishments.
86
But in general industry seems to have been carried on by small
independent craftsmen helped by their families and sometimes by
apprentices and a few slaves or hired assistants. Caecilianus, one of
the duoviri of the little African town of Aptungi in 303, seems to
have been a prosperous craftsman of this type. He had gone to
Zama to buy linen yarn on the day that the edict of persecution
arrived, he deposed before a duovir of Carthage twelve years later,
and giving evidence before the proconsul Aelianus he further
deposed: 'He came to me at my house, I was having dinner with my
workmen. He came there and stood at the door. "Where is
Caecilianus ?", he said, "Here," I answered, "what is it?" I said to
him. "Is everything all right?" "Yes," he said. I answered him:
"If you don't mind having dinner with us, come in and sit down<"
Caecilianus must have been a man of some substance to be duovtr,
even of a little town like Aptungi, but he was apparently illiterate-
at any rate he employed Ingentius to write his official letters for
him when he held the office-and he ate with his workmen, who
may have been hired men or slaves, and probably worked with
them.
87
The builders of Sardis were evidently working masons, seeing
that sickness was a valid excuse for delay in completing a contract.
Most craftsmen seem to have been in a small way: they are classed
in the laws as plubuii, and only the most prosperous could aspire to
the decurionate even in the smallest towns. They plied their trades,
as today in the Near East, in little workshops facing on the street;
at Antioch they were obliged to keep a lamp burning all night
outside their shops to provide street lighting, and Libanius protested
that the governor's insistence on tripling these lights had ruined
many of them. Others too poor to afford shops worked in stalls
between the columns of the street colonnades.
88

LABOURERS AND CRAFTSMEN
86r
Trades tended to be hereditary, since fathers naturally trained
their sons in their own craft, but this was matter of custom not of
law, and exceptions are to be found. John of Lycopolis was
apprenticed to a carpenter, but his brother was a dyer. From
Egypt we have several articles of apprenticeship and contracts of
service for a year or term of years, specifying the wages or rations
and clothing which the master is to give. From Egypt too we have
the record of a dispute between the builders' guild of Oxyrhynchus
and one P_aul, a. line? weaver's apprentice or former apprentice,
now working wtth hls master. The linen weavers, Paul's counsel
explains, 'are of no small usefulness to the public services, as you,
my lord, well know. For they contribute much to the anabolicum
and there is all the work that they have to do. But despite this
pressing need the builders claim to regard them alone as useless.
For they are striving to make my client a builder, though he is an
unoffending linenwe_aver. Their attempt is utterly unlawful, for
they want to drag him from the trade that he has learned and to
teach him another, that of a builder'. The judge, the Juridicus
Augypti, upheld Paul's plea, ruling that 'if he has learned the craft
and is already in t!iat trade, he is not to be transferred to another
craft'. It would appear from counsel's arguments that the builders
were claiming that they needed extra manpower, and from the
judge's carefully worded ruling that if Paul had not yet passed his
apprenticeship he might have been compulsorily drafted into the
builders' guild.s9
From 395 onwards-and particular in the next decade-a number
of laws were issued in the Western empire prohibiting co!logiati
from enrolling themselves in the ojjicia, enlisting in the army, or
migrating to the country and taking up agriculture, and recalling
to the guilds those who had thus left them. This legislation was
confirmed by Valentinian III, who also forbade collegiati to take
orders in the church. In the West, then, where the urban guilds
were in decay, in order to maintain the civic services which
depended on their labour, the government attempted to make the
craftsmen and shopkeepers into a hereditary caste. No similar
laws were issued by the Eastern emperors, and none of the Western
laws were reproduced in Justinian's Code. In the East the guilds of
craftsmen and shopkeepers evidently continued to flourish and
their membership remained free. 90
It is unfortunate that we know least of the most important
industrial towns, those which produced fine fabrics for export.
Something can be gathered from Procopius' rather confused
account of how Justinian ruined the silk industry. The raw silk,
according to a law of Justinian, was bought from the Persians by
the imperial commerciarii at the rate of r 5 solidi the pound, and was
resold by them at the same price to the raw silk merchants (met-
axarii). The industry was concentrated at Berytus and Tyre, whe:e,
according to Procopius, the merchants (Hpweot), supenn-
tendents (budr
11
;,wveyoi) and the craftsmen (rexvi-rat) res1ded. T.he
craftsmen were humble manual workers, who were threatened Wlth
starvation when the industry was killed; they were free men,
for many of them migrated to Persia. It may be conJectured that
they worked as wage earners for the metaxarii or for the super-
intendents, who were presumably either n;anaging agents of the
metaxarii or entrepreneurs who bought silk from them. Alter-
natively the metaxarii or superintendents may have jobbed out work
to the craftsmen on a piece-work basis. Some metaxarii seem. to
have kept the whole business in their hands from start to finish,
buying the raw silk. and selline; the silk such men often
resided at Constantmople, which was the1r prmc1pal market.
91
Whether the structure of the high-grade woollen and linen
industries was similar we do not know. Silk, since the raw silk was
very expensive and all imported, lent itself particularly to this form
of organisation. The fine wools which. were used for best
fabrics were also relatively dear. Atrebat1c wool cost four times as
much as 'best middle' and eight times as much as ordinary wool.
The best linen yarn, such as would have been. _used for the nan;ed
brands of fabrics, cost r ,zoo, 96o and 84o denaru a pound accordmg
to grade, while ordinary yarn cost from 720 to 450, and coarse yarn
only 250 to 72. The weavers in these industries may well have
worked for merchants. Ordinary weavers no doubt bought their
yarn, as did Caecilianus, and sold their own products: We
of one weaver who rented a piece of land and grew h1s flax on lt;
but he was a village weaver of Aphrodito.
92
Rather superior to the ordinary run of craftsmen were the
workers in certain highly skilled trades. Constantine, anxious to
encourage these trades, which as a result of the anarchy and
impoverishment of the late third century were in decline, exempted
them from the personal burdens to which ordinary craftsmen
were subject, and this rule was still maintained i? the sixth
The list of exemptions opens with some occupat1ons of
or semi-professional status-architects, docto_rs, su_r-
geons, painters and sculptors. There follow vanous skilled crafts.m
the building trade, carvers in stone and marble, makers of mosrucs
and tessellated floors, plasterers and makers of coffe:ed
gilders and woodcarvers; metal workers, such as 1ron sm1ths,
bronze smiths, plumbers, silversmiths and goldsmiths; founders
and makers of statuettes; potters and glassworkers; carpenters with
LABOURERS AND CRAFTSMEN 863
inlay workers and ivory carvers; fullers, furriers and purple dyers.
Such specialists would mostly have been found in the greater cities,
where there was sufficient demand for their products. The building
workers were from the nature of their crafts to some extent itinerant.
In a letter to the magnificent Isocasius, a sophist, Theodoret, bishop
of Cyrrhus, promises to send to him a skilled woodcarver called
Gerontius, though he still needs his services for himself: the
clarissimus Eurycianus, a tribune, also apparently wants Gerontius
to decorate his house. Gregory of Nyssa, when he was building
his octagonal chapel, wrote to Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium,
asking him if he could send him some builders skilled at vaulting.
He had made a contract with a gang of thirty freemasons, but they
were not the type of mason he needed, and were expensive, costing
one solidus (per day for the whole gang?) and their keep. He
would prefer a contract which specified the amount of work to be
done per day, so that he would not have to pay them for the days
they were not working.93
The aristocracy of the craftsmen was formed by the goldsmiths,
silversmiths, and jewellers, who from the nature of their trade
to carry some stock of expensive goods. Even they, however, did
not need to be wealthy men, for they often worked up customers'
materials. A charming story is told of a pious apprentice in a
goldsmith's shop. A wealthy patrician ordered an elaborate g'?ld
cross set with jewels, providing the materials, and the apprentlce
in his pious zeal added some gold out of his own wages. When the
cross was weighed in the presence ?f the customer found
overweight, he was accused of alloymg the metal supplied: the
story ends happily with the patrician adopting the apprentice as his
son. We also hear of a deacon who worked as a silversmith at
Jerusalem. His shop was burgled and lost 100 pounds of
which would have been worth the cons1derable sum of 400 solid1.
But his distress we are told, was all the greater because much of it
was not his property. It was the ambition of the silversmiths
and jewellers of the metropoleis to be enrolled among the co-
hortales of the provincial officium. This seems a humble enough
ambition, but Theodosius II indignantly ordered 'every rank and
grade to be purged of such contagion' .9
4
Much higher up the social scale were the argentarii
of Constantinople, who from being silversmiths had developed
into rudimentary bankers, and received deposits, made loans, and
would arrange transfers of money: in a document dated 541 we
find Flavius Anastasius, argentarius of Constantinople, making a
loan of zo solidi at 8 per cent. to two Egyptians for four months,
repayable at Alexandria to his agent Thomas. Justinian exempted
I
!
[i
!i
rl
them from the general ban against negotiatores holding civil service
appointments (mi!itiae). From his voluminous legislation on this
point it appears that the ambition of the argentarii of the capital was
to buy for themselves or their sons one of the many saleable
sinecure offices about the court: these were a form of annuity,
carrying a salary, and also gave social distinction and some legal
privileges, They varied very considerably in price, from over z,ooo
solidi for the post of protector domesticus to a mere z 5o for a clerkship
in the sacra scrinia: the Flavius Anastasius mentioned above was
content with the fairly modest office of castrensianus sacrae mensae or
Waiter at the Imperial Table. Difficulties arose when argentarii went
bankrupt, as they seem, to judge by their numerous petitions to
Justinian, to have done fairly frequently. A fraudulent argentarius
might cheat his creditors by putting all his assets into mi!itiae for
himself and his relatives, and Justinian ruled that creditors might
therefore insist on such mi!itiae being sold. On the other hand it
was maintained by the argentarii that it was unfair that mi!itiae
bought for their sons out of their wives' fortunes should be
thrown into the pool, and this exception Justinian allowed.95
Trade is rather difficult to disentangle from industry in the
Roman empire, for most craftsmen sold their products direct to
customers, and some, like jewellers, were simultaneously skilled
workmen and purveyors of imported articles. Nevertheless there
were many merchants (negotiatores) in the strict sense, who made
their living by buying and selling goods. The petty shopkeepers of
the towns and the larger villages have been already discussed,
Superior to these were the merchants who imported and distributed
high-class goods of luxury character, especially the clothiers.
Such men normally lived in the larger towns, the provincial and
diocesan capitals. In such cities there were customers for quality
goods, the vicar or governor with his assessor and higher officials,
the barristers of diocesan or provincial bar, the metropolitan and
the higher clergy. Moreover many of the provincial nobility made
their homes in them, and they served as shopping centres for those
of the upper classes who lived in the provincial cities or in country
villas. Honorati and curia/os had to attend the annual meeting of the
provincial council at the metropolis, and there were also diocesan
councils, which gave an opportunity of visiting a great city like
Carthage or Thessalonica. Honorius in authorising the revival of
the annual council of the Seven Provinces at Aries suggests that a
visit to a city where the products of all provinces are on sale may

not be unwelcome to the honorati and curia/os. Bishops similarly had
to attend the annual provincial synods at the metropolis and in some
areas diocesan synods were regularly held, in Mrica, for instance, at
Carthage. It was to Alexandria that the Egyptian bishop Troilus
had come with his thirty pounds of gold to buy an embossed silver
dinner service, when John the patriarch shamed him into dis-
tributing it to the poor.96
These dealers in luxury goods aspired, like the silversmiths and
jewellers, to posts in the provincial officium. They cannot therefore
have been very rich or important persons. We possess some family
papers of Aurelius Psates, a purple seller of Panopolis at the end
of the sixth century, and of his two sons, Pachymius and John, who
succeeded him in the business. Psates owned two houses in
Panopolis, and two others in the village of This, where he later
settled down. Pachymius bought another house in This, and one
floor of a three-storey house in Panopolis. He employed assistants,
one of whom indentured himself to serve for two years at the pay of
19 artabae of wheat, 9 in the first year and ro in the second. The
family was evidently comfortably off in a modest way.97
In the West many of these importers were orientals, natives of
the areas from which the bulk of the high quality goods originated;
they no doubt maintained trade connections with their old homes
and had expert knowledge of the goods they handled. When
Procopius of Caesarea was sent by Belisarius to spy out the land in
Sicily, he was happy to find a fellow citizen and boyhood friend who
had settled as a trader in Syracuse. An inscription dated 6oz
records Peter of Alexandria, who was a linen merchant at Panor-
mus, the second city of Sicily. A papyrus reveals that George, son
of Julian, a silk merchant who left his estate to the church of Ra-
venna in 55 z, was a citizen of Antioch.
98
At Rome in the early fifth century the Greek general dealers
(pantapo!ae) aroused the jealousy of the local (taber-
narii) and they were expelled on the charge of exceeding the
statutory prices. In 440 Valentinian III found it necessary to
recall them in the interests of the people of Rome. At Ravenna
Sidonius Apollinaris regarded it as a paradox that 'the clergy are
moneylenders and the Syrians sing psalms', while in the sixth
century several local tradesmen, Marinus, the money changer, John
the argentarius, Peter the co!!ectarius, John the Syrian, the negotiator,
attest Latin documents in Greek, or write out the Latin formulae
phonetically in Greek characters.
99
Even in Merovingian Gaul many of the shopkeepers were Jews
and Syrians; King Gun tram entering Orleans in 58 5 was greeted by
acclamations in Hebrew and Syriac as well as Latin. Some of the
resident oriental merchants were prosperous men. Euphronius, a
Syrian negotiator of Burdigala, was prepared to pay 200 solidi to
save his treasured relics of St Sergius from the rapacity of Gundo-
vald, and Eusebius, a Syrian merchant of Paris, was rich enough to
outbid local rivals for the bishopric of the city in 59 r. Priscus the
Jew, who supplied King Chilperic with luxury goods, was evidently
a wealthy man.
10
0
Itinerant merchants may be divided into two classes, those who
traded by land and iliose who traded by sea. The former included
many vety humble folk, such as the pedlars who frequented the
village fairs. Into this class would fall the veterans who preferred
a cash donative to a peasant's holding of land and the humble
clerics who earned their living by trade: they were exempt from the
chrysargyron up to an assessment of 10 or 15 solidi. One would
expect to find men of greater substance engaged in ilie trade
beyond the frontiers of the empire. Priscus of Panium met one of
these in Attila's camp. He was, he said, a Greek who had settled at
Viminacium on the Danube and prospered in trade and married a
rich wife. He was wealthy enough to be allotted as a special prize
to Onegesius, one of the Hunnic nobles, when the town was
captured. Even the merchants engaged in the lucrative luxury
trade with Persia seem however to have been relatively modest men.
In the fourth century Antoninus, a 'wealthy merchant' ('opulentus
mercator') of Mesopotamia, entered the ojjicium of the dux as a
financial clerk and rose to be a protector: if so minor a post in the
civil service was a step up in the social scale the standard of wealth
among Mesopotamian merchants cannot have been high. In the
sixth century we hear of two brothers, Elias and Theodore, who
served as agents for a merchant in Persia. They were paid at first
5 or 6 solidi a head per year, little more than a common soldier's
ration allowance, and were during twenty years' service raised to
10, 20 and finally 30 solidi, perhaps what a senior non-commissioned
officer received. They then set up on their own first at Edessa and
later at Melitene,lOl
In maritime commerce a distinction must be drawn between the
shipper (navicularius, vavxkfJeoq), the captain (magister, xvfJeeVf!-r:* or
neovavx?.woq) and the merchant (mercator, negotiator, l!p,noeoq,
neayl"a-r:ev-r:>]q) or his agent (numx6q). All these roles might be, and
very commonly were, filled by one man, the owner of a vessel
which he navigated himself and which he loaded with cargoes
which he bought and sold. There were, however, shipowners who
did not navigate their own ships. The church of Alexandria
owned over a dozen large seagoing vessels. On one occasion the
entire fleet was caught in a storm in the Adriatic and had to jettison
MERCHANTS
its cargo, which included dried fruit, clothing, and silver; the loss
was estimated at 34 centenaria (nearly 2 j,ooo solidi), and ilie agents
and captains (oi manual ual neovavxA'Jeo) responsible took sanctuary
on their return to Alexandria. Other great landowners sometimes
owned ships, and it was an abuse which the imperial government
prohibited for small owner-masters to sail under the flag of a
great man in order to secure privileged treatment. A merchant
shipper in a big way might also own a fleet of ships whiclr he
operated by agents and captains, and we hear of a quite modest
shipper who sent out his one ship under his brother as agent
( ntan"6q) .102
Most shippers not only carried their own cargoes, but also mer-
chants with their wares, charging them passage money and freight.
The Digest preserves elaborate rules for apportioning the loss
between them and the shipper when part of the cargo had to be
jettisoned. Hilarion the hermit, when to avoid arrest he took a
passage at Paraetonium in Libya for Sicily, was afraid of being
recognised by the sailors and merchants on board. John Moschus
tells of a jewel merchant, travelling with his slaves, who was nearly
murdered by the crew for the sake of his precious wares,l03
Some shippers and merchants no doubt plied wholesale trade,
buying goods in the centres of production and selling them to
importers in the centres of consumption, or buying and selling
cargoes at one of the big merchants' fairs. There was an annual
fair of this kind at Aegae in Cilicia, which lasted, free of toll, for
forty days. Even after Vandal piracy had made the Mediterranean
unsafe for shipping it was frequented by western merchants, who
no doubt bought oriental wares which had come from Persia via
Nisibis or Callinicum, as well as products of the region such as the
linen fabrics of Cilicia and Syria. Theodoret, anxious to
repatriate Maria, the girl who had been sold into slavery at ilie
sack of Carthage, sent her to the bishop of Aegae, confident that he
could find a reliable shipper, captain or merchant from the West
attending the fair, who would take her back to her father.l04
But many lesser merchants, particularly those who travelled as
supercargoes, hawked their goods retail from port to port. There
is a revealing letter from Synesius, in remote Cyrene. He writes to
his broilier, down at the port of Ptolemais, that he has heard that
the Athenian clothing merchant has made his annual call, and asks
him to buy three Attic cloaks, and not to delay in case all his best
wares should have been sold. Wholesalers also employed travelling
salesmen who operated in the same way. Thus in the reign of
Heraclius a wealiliy Constantinopolitan dealer, perhaps a metaxar-
ius, entrusted Jacob, a Jew, with clothing to the value of 2 lb.
gold ( 144 solidi) and booked him a passage on a ship sailing for
Carthage, and perhaps Gaul. Jacob's instructions were to sell the
clothes at ports of call, and remit the proceeds back to Constan-
tinople; he received a salary of I 5 solidi a year for his He
actually disposed of all his stock at Carthage, selling them to
customers, like the Athenian clothier whom Synesius patrorused.
105
A shipper thus made a part of his profit from fares and freight,
but he normally carried a cargo of his own. The owner of a large
merchant ship, of say 2o,ooo modii, would have to be a man of some
substance, since in addition to his ship he would need working
capital to pay his crew and to buy his cargo. The price of ships is
not attested, but in the Rhodian Sea Law, which probably dates
from the seventh or eighth century, when the value of money had
not greatly changed, ships are assessed for average at 5o solidi per
I,ooo modii if new, 30 solidi if old. A ship of 2o,ooo modii would
then cost initially about I,ooo solidi, and to load a ship of this
capacity even with a cheap cargo like wheat would require about
ten pounds of gold.roo
A shipper, however, rarely depended on his own capital ex-
clusively, preferring to raise nautical loans, which would partially
cover him against loss by storm. For such loans, since the creditor
stood the risk of losing his money if the ship were wrecked or the
cargo jettisoned, the rate of interest was subject to no legal limit,
until Justinian in 5 28 fixed the maximum at I2 per cent. per mum,
as against 8 per cent. for ordinary commercial loans and 6 per cent.
for private loans.107
In 5 40 he received a petition from two citizens of Constantinople,
Peter and Eulogius, who stated that they made their living by the
issue of nautical loans: so speculative a business, where so much
depended on an intimate knowledge of shippers and their ships,
did not appeal to the ordinary investor and was usually conducted
by men, often retired sea captains, who specialised in the work.
They desired, they said, that the normal practices current in
nautical loans should be confirmed by law. The praetorian prefect
was ordered to hold an enquiry and summoned a group of shippers,
who deposed thaf practice varied greatly. Sometimes the lender
charged 10 per cent. but in addition was entitled to lade the
ship (presumably on the return journey) with one modius of wheat
or barley per solidus of the loan, free of freight and customs duty.
Other lenders charged 12t per cent. not per annum, but for the
duration of the voyage: this worked out to the advantage of the
shipper if he was delayed by bad weather but, as a normal round trip
was a matter of two or three months, usually paid the lender. The
shipper was entitled to 20 days' grace on his return to sell his
MERCHANTS
cargo, but was charged 8 per cent. if he failed to make repayment
thereafter. Justinian confirmed these rules, but eight months later
revoked the law.
108
Only I 2 per cent. per annum thus remained the rule, and it looks
as if on these terms lenders were unwilling to make nautical loans,
in which they took the risk of loss, but would only lend on ordinary
terms. At any rate in two cases in the later sixth century, at Ascalon
and at Tyre, we find that a merchant who has borrowed money and
lost his ship is imprisoned by his creditors. Both stories have a
romantic ending. At Ascalon there was a brigand imprisoned in
the same gaol as the merchant, and he was so touched by the
devotion of the merchant's wife that he revealed to her where he
had hidden his swag. 'I was a brigand', he said, 'and committed
many crimes and murders, and I know that when the governor
comes and I am produced, I shall be executed as a murderer. I
felt compunction when I saw your virtue. Go to such and such
a place by the city wall and dig and take the money you will find
there'. The brigand was duly executed, and the merchant's wife
dug where he directed her and unearthed a pot of gold, which
was more than enough to pay her husband's debts. At Tyre the
other merchant's wife tried to make some money by prostituting
herself, but her first customer, a wealthy man named Moschus,
the local commerciarius (controller of foreign trade), struck by her
reluctant demeanour, asked her what her trouble was, and learning
her stoty gave her the sum required, which was five pounds of
gold.to9
Neither of these two shippers seems to have been in a very big
way of business. Nor was a merchant of Alexandria, who when he
sailed for Constantinople, left his wife and little girl in charge of one
slave, who unfortunately developed homicidal mania and rushed
from the kitchen into the dining room brandishing a knife. The
life of John the Almoner, patriarch of Alexandria (6I r to 6I9), tells
a strange story of another shipper of this class. He had fallen on
evil days, and asked for a loan. John lent him five pounds of gold,
with which, added to money of his own, he bought a cargo and set
sail. No sooner was he out of Alexandria harbour than he was
wrecked; his ship was salvaged but all the cargo lost. John
inferred that the money which the shipper had added to the loan
came from a tainted source, and lent him ten pounds of gold to
buy a second cargo. Again the cargo was lost and this time the
ship also perished. John inferred that the ship must also have
been tainted and accordingly entrnsted him with a ship of two
myriads belonging to the church of Alexandria laden with corn.
The captain was again involved in a storm which carried him
twenty days, and he eventually found himself in
Bntam. Luckily there was a famine here, and the chief men of the
town where they landed offered to pay a solidus per modius for the
corn, or alternatiyely to .load the ship with a return cargo of tin. no
Another story m the hfe of Johu the Almoner introduces a more
me;chant. man had loaded his ship and sent it to
Mnca under brother s comma_nd. He then came to the patriarch
and offered all the rest of h1s wealth, which amounted to 7!
lb. gold, askmg only that he would pray for the life of his son and
for the safe return of his ship. In the event the son died and the
cargo was lost. The patriarch was greatly relieved when the mer-
chant came to him and told him that it had been revealed to him in
a vision that his son would have gone to the bad had he survived
and that but for his charitable gift he would have lost his ship and
his crew, including his brother, as well as his cargo.m
A story told of an earlier patriarch of Alexandria, Apollinarius
(551-569), a much riche: merchant. He had been one of
the leadmg citizens of Alexandna and had left his son a great
fortune in ships and. in gold. The son had been unfortunate, and
lost so much by shipwrecks that he was reduced to the utmost
poverty. The .benevolent patriarch, knowing that he was too proud
to accept chanty, summoned the church lawyer and instructed him
to draw up a bond in which the church of Alexandria acknowledged
a l<?a,n 50 lb. gold from the man's father, and, to add
veriSimilitude, to crumple and dirty the bond by dipping it in a
barrel of meal. done lawyer was instructed to go to the
man and mtlmate to that for a consideration, say three
solid!, he would to h1m something to his advantage. The
young man sadiy rephed that he had not three solidi in the world
and the lawyer, pretending to be touched with pity, showed him
bond. The 50 lb. of gold set the young man on his feet again and
he was soon richer than his father.n '
Palladius tells of another Alexandrian merchant a man in the
Spanish trade, who left his two sons 5 ,ooo solidi in 'cash as well as
clothes and Rufinus .records tha! another, having returned
dowr: the Nile three shi.ps laden w1th merchandise-probably
Arabian, East. and onental wares transhipped from the Red
Sea ports-distnbuted the profits of this expedition and all his
substance to the poor to the amount of 2o,ooo solidi.ns
These. tales of the hagiographers, which are the only evidence we
possess, may not be true, but they are contemporary and typical
and. illustrate the scale of wealth which merchants enjoyed.
ordmary merchant who owned one ship usually operated on credit,
borrowmg sums of the order of 5 lb. of gold (3 6o solidi) to finance
MERCHANTS 871
a voyage, and putting in an equivalent sum of his own. Others
had a larger reserve, and might still have 5 oo solidi in hand after
loading a ship .. Fifty pounds of gold (3,6oo solidi) was sufficient
working capital to launch a man as one of the leading merchants of
Alexandria, and the merchant princes of the greatest commercial
city of the empire owned fortunes of 70 or, if Rufinus' figure is to
be believed, close on 2 7 5 lb. gold. These are substantial sums, but
they make a very modest showing beside the fortunes of the great
territorial magnates, who enjoyed annual incomes of r,joo to 4,ooo
lb. gold.
The figures fall into line with all that we know of the social
standing of manufacturers and merchants. There are one or two
hints that great men sometimes owned ships or employed agents
t<? trade on their behalf. Honorius forbade 'those who are noble by
birth or resplendent with honours or richer in property to ply
trade to. the detriment <;>f the cities, so that the intercourse of buying
and selling may be easier between commoner and merchant'. This
law seems to have been little needed. In general senators, honorati
and even decurions considered industry and trade beneath them.
Even the ?ankers and silk merchants of Constantinople aspired to
nothing higher than petty court sinecures. The great majority of
negotiatores were plebeians, who might, if they acquired enough
slaves or bought some land, become eligible for the curia of a minor
city, and who considered it a distinction to become enrolled in their
provincial ojjicium.n4
The best evidence for the poverty of trade and industry is the
collatio lustralis, the tax which Constantine imposed upon them and
which Anastasius abolished. The collatio was comprehensive in
scope. After 374, it is true, rural craftsmen, a numerous if humble
class, were exempted, but rural traders remained liable. The term
negotiator was widely interpreted, including not only merchants,
shopkeepers and craftsmen but moneylenders and prostitutes.
Legal immunities were few-painters, veterans and the lower
clergy-and though there was some evasion by shippers and mer-
chants who secured the patronage of the great, it was probably less
extensive than in the land tax. By universal consent the burden of
the tax was very severe. There are many complaints against the
severity of the land tax, which was in fact very heavy; but they
are surpassed by the laments over the collatio lustralis.m
Libanius in a pamphlet written not long after 3 87, the year of the
famous Riot of the Statues at Antioch, when the desperate populace,
on the announcement of a levy, rose and tore down the imperial
images, says: 'I must now speak of what surpassed everything
else, that is the intolerable tribute of silver and gold, that makes
men shudder at the coming of the dread quinquennalia. This tax
has a plausible name derived from the merchants, but they use
the sea to escape and the sufferers are those whose manual toil
scarcely brings them bread. Not even the cobbler escapes. I have
often seen them throwing their awls into the air, swearing that
that was all they had. But that does not free them from the collec-
tors, who snarl at them and almost bite them. This occasion, your
majesty, increases slavery, depriving of their freedom those who are
sold by their parents, not that their money boxes may receive the
price, but that they may see it going into the hands of the col-
lector' .
116
During the fourth century the quinquennial incidence of the tax
must have added to its terrors, for the average improvident
taxpayer would not have saved up for it. But in 410 Anthemius,
praetorian prefect of the East, enacted that 'what used to be de-
manded at one time and on a single demand note should be paid by
small, very small contributions, so that the payers will not notice
it'. In accordance with this rule the eleven members of an Egyptian
guild elected a headman and agreed to pay him z,ooo,ooo denarii
each on the z8th of each month for the collatio lustralis. The
contribution is not so alarming as it appears, as the solidus at this
date probably stood at about Go or 70 million denarii: they were
apparently reckoning on paying about one and a half solidi each at
the end of four years.
117
Nevertheless Zosimus in the fifth century speaks in similar
terms to Libanius in the fourth. It was Constantine, he says, who
'imposed the tax of gold and silver on all who pursued trade every-
where, even on keepers of general stores in the cities, down to the
poorest, not even exempting the wretched prostitutes from this
tax. So that you could see, when the fourth year approached, when
this tax had to be paid, moaning and lamentation in every city, and
when it came, flogging and torture being laid upon the bodies of
those who thtough utter poverty could not support the loss. And
now mothers sold their children, and fathers prostituted their
daughters, forced to pay the collectors of the chrysargyron from the
money they thus eamed.'118
This terrible tax, which drove the merchants and craftsmen of the
empire to desperation, was abolished by so prudent and successful a
financier as Anastasius: it apparently yielded about 5 per cent. of the
imperial revenue.n9
CHAPTER XXII
THE CHURCH
X
the Council of Ephesus in 43 r the bishops of Cyprus
presented a petition. When about to consecrate a new
metropolitan of Constantia, they had received a thteatening
letter from the master of the soldiers of the East, forbidding them
to proceed. This letter, they declared, had been inspired by the
bishop of Antioch. 'And what was the object of the bishop of
Antioch ?' asked the council. 'He was trying to lay his hands on
our island,' replied one of the Cypriots, 'and to usurp the con.se-
crations for himself, contrary to the canons and the custom which
has prevailed from ancient times.' 'So it appears,' the council
asked 'that the bishop of Antioch has not consecrated any bishop
in 'From the time of the Holy Apostles,' replied
another Cypriot, 'they can never prove that the bishop of Antioch
stepped in and held consecrations or had anything to do with the
island, or interfered with consecrations there-neither he nor
anyone else.' 'The council recalls the canon of the holy fathers
assembled at Nicaea which maintained the privileges of each church
at that time, in which the city of Antioch is mentioned. Inform
the council whether the bishop of Antioch has not the right by
ancient custom to hold consecrations among you.' The second
Cypriot again spoke up. 'We deposed !hat has
never stepped in or consecrated either ill the metropolis or m any
other city. The council of our province, acting according t?
the canons, appoints our metropolitan. We beg; your holy
to confirm this by your vote, so that the ancient custom which
has prevailed may now prevail, and our province may suffer no
innovation from anyone.' The council, after verifying that the
last three metropolitans of Constantia had indeed been. consecrated
by the provincial council, gave provisional judgment In favour of
the Cypriots.
1
This debate is typical of many. In any disJ?u.te the canons of the
councils and ancient custom are the determining factors. Funda-
mentally the constitution of the church rested on custom, for in
873
874 THE CHURCH
enactipg canons councils did not claim so much to legislate as to
give their sanction to established custom. Such customs,
approved by a great council, acquired a stronger and more lastmg
validity; hence the inquiry of the Council of Ephesus about
Nicene canon, which as generally interpreted gave prima facto
support to Antiochene claims. But ancient custom was a good
enough justification for many anomalies not plainly contrary to
any canon. Customs of course grew and changed, disputes arose,
and councils were asked to adjudicate. They sometimes accepted
ancient customs of recent growth on somewhat slender evidence,
sometimes they compromised between two conflicting claims
without seriously investigating their historical basis. But they
rarely if ever enacted any overt innovation. 'Let the canons
prevail,' 'let ancient custom prevail,' were their typical slogans.
As in this case bishops were sometimes prone to invoke the aid of
the secular arm to enforce their interpretation of the canons and
of ancient custom, and the more influential were able to obtain
imperial constitutions confirming their claims. But such appeals
to the imperial government were always condemned in principle,
and on its side the government rarely intervened, except in response
to ecclesiastical pressure.
Such being the principles on which it was shaped, the constitu-
tion of the church was naturally not a logical or coherent whole.
It was full of local or regional variations and abounded in odd
anomalies. It grew from the bottom upwards, and it was only
gradually that bishoprics were grouped in provinces, and provinces
in larger units of church government. Its growth was irregular,
depending on the varying success with which greater sees, by
gradual encroachments, hardening into custom, established their
ascendancy over their lesser neighbours. The process was slow,
extending over the fourth and fifth centuries, and until it was
completed there was ample room for conflict between the rival
great sees in the no man's lands between them.
The basic organisation of the church had been formed long
before the Great Persecution. Each Christian community, or
church in the narrower sense, was ruled by a bishop whose powers
were autocratic. He might consult his clergy or even his whole
flock, and in controversial matters perhaps normally did so; but
his judgment was final. He ordained his priests, deacons and lower
clergy: he could deprive them if they were disobedient to his
commands. He admitted new members to the community, and
BISHOPRICS
could expel those whose morals or beliefs he condemned. He
controlled the revenues and distributed them at his pleasure.
He held his office for life, and his people could not depose him.
2
In his appointment they had some voice. The choice of a new
bishop had at least to be approved by the clergy and people of
the church which he was to rule, and they might take the initiative
in selecting a candidate. But a bishop could be consecrated only
by another bishop, and normally the bishops of the neighbourhood
acted in concert. The appointment of a bishop was thus dependent
upon agreement between the local community and the bishops of
the district. The latter could also adjudicate disputes between
themselves, or between a bishop and a member of his flock. They
could even, in an extreme case, depose a bishop. For these purposes
councils of neighbouring bishops were held, at first as occasion
arose, then regularly once or twice a year. Such councils served as
a check on the autocratic power wielded by one bishop over his
church.
3
The church in the ecclesiastical organisation normally corres-
ponded to the city in the secular administrative scheme. This was
only natural, since the city was the unit not only of
but of social life. According to Theodore of Mopsuest1a this
arrangement was not primitive. 'Originally there were usually
only two, or at most three, bishops in each province,' he writes,
'a state of affairs which prevailed in most of the Western provinces
until quite recently, and which still may be found in several at the
present day. As time went on, however, bishops were ordained
not only in cities, but in quite small places where there was really
no need of anyone being invested with episcopal authority.'
It is very doubtful if Theodore, who wrote towards the end of the
fourth century had any information about the early organisation
of the church better than our own, and questionable whether he
was well informed about the Western churches of his own day.
He may well have been generalising from the well-known anomaly
of the province of Scythia, where the bishop of Tomi ruled all
the cities.
4
Such anomalies were survivals of ancient local custom, and do
prove that in some places bishop had in earlY: times a of
cities under his sway. But It would be rash to infer that this was
the general practice the early chu.rch. On the contrary the
evidence suggests that It w.as normal 1n the East, at rate, to
appoint a bishop to each city, however small the Chnst1an com-
munity in it might be. When Gregory Thaumaturgus was. conse-
crated bishop of about 240, there were only nmeteen
Christians in his congregatiOn. In the West there was apparently
AA
THE CHURCH
some feeling against multiplying bishoprics to this degree. At
the Council of Sardica, it was ruled, on the motion of Hosius of
Corduba, 'that it be not lawful to appoint a bishop in a village
or small city, for which even one priest alone suffices, in order that
the episcopal title and authority be not cheapened. But the bishops
of the province, as I said before, ought to appoint bishops in those
cities where there have been bishops before, and, if a city be found
to have so numerous a congregation as to be held worthy of being
a bishopric on its own, let it receive one.' This canon was cited
by Pope Leo the Great in a letter to the African bishops, but in
Africa conditions were rather peculiar, the cities being so very
numerous, and most of them little more than villages. The rule
was generally accepted by the fifth century, and already by the
fourth in the East, that each city had its bishop, and the exceptions
were recognised as anomalies sanctioned by ancient custom.
5
The major exception, the province of Scythia, has been mentioned
above. At the Council of Ephesus in 43 r it was deposed that 'an
ancient custom has prevailed in the province of Europe that each
of the bishops has two or three cities under him, so that the bishop
of Heraclea has Heraclea and Panium and Orni and Ganus, four
cities in number, and the bishop ofByze has Byze and Arcadiopolis,
and similarly the bishop of Coela has both Coela and Callipolis,
and the bishop of Sausadia both Sausadia and Aphrodisias.' From
the signatures of Chalcedon it appears that the bishop of Mitylene
ruled not only the three cities of Lesbos (Mitylene, Methymna and
Eresus), but also the neighbouring islands ofTenedos and Porose-
lene. There are some other cases known where a small city was
subject to a larger neighbour by ancient custom. Mareotes was
part of the bishopric of Alexandria: here the anomaly is readily
explicable, for Mareotes, though juridically a city, was in fact a
rural area with no town of its own. Augustine mentions a small
municipium near Hippo which, though it had its own decurions,
was subject to his episcopal authority.6
In other cases anomalies were caused by the creation of new
cities by the imperial government. Usually the church followed
suit, and the Council of Chalcedon ruled: 'if a city be newly
constituted or reconstituted by imperial authority, the arrangement
of the ecclesiastical parishes shall follow the civil and public rules.'
There were, however, exceptions. When Constantine separated
Antaradus (which was predominantly Christian) from Aradus
(which' was still pagan), one bishop nevertheless continued to
rule both the mainland town and the few Christians on the island.
It was no doubt for similar reasons that Termessus and the
imperial foundations of Iovia and Eudocias, and Isaura and
BISHOPRICS
Leontopolis, were single bishoprics. Conversely at Gaza, when Con-
stantine made its port, Maiuma, into a separate city, two bishoprics
were formed, and survived even when Gaza and Maiuma were
reunited permanently by J ulian!
Bishoprics always tended to proliferate, sometimes for the
reasonable causes enunciated by Hosius, more often owing to
ecclesiastical controversies, in which rival parties tried to establish
their hold on marginal communities by installing one of their
adherents as bishop. The Arian party installed the rebel priest
Ischyras as bishop of Mareotes to spite Athanasius. The ancient
custom of the province of Europe was confirmed at Ephesus
because of attempts by sympathisers with Nestorius to consecrate
bishops in the non-episcopal towns; a Nestorian got himself made
bishop of Tenedos, which traditionally was subject to Mitylene.
These particular attempts proved abortive, but new sees were
from time to time established and by the end of the fifth century
very few cities lacked a bishop. Zeno enacted that, with the
exception of Scythia, and of the double see of Isaura and Leonto-
polis, every city should have its own bishop. It is doubtful if this
law was rigidly enforced in defiance of ancient custom, but the
exceptions were by now negligible.
8
Bishoprics were not confined to cities in the legal sense of the
word. There were in the first place units of government which
were not cities-saltus, regiones, castra and independent villages.
Here practice varied; sometimes these areas were subject to the
ecclesiastical authority of a neighbouring city. Thus Basil, bishop
of Caesarea, ruled the regiones of central Cappadocia, and the
bishops of Nicaea Tottaeum and Doris and the other regiones of
Bithynia. In Egypt Helearchia was partitioned between the
bishops of Phlabonis and Pachnemunis in the fourth century.
More usually, however, these areas acquired bishops of their own.
In Palestine the four regiones of the Jordan valley and the saltus
of Gerara were independent bishoprics and in Egypt Helearchia
had become one by 43 r. In the province of Arabia, where the
village was the normal unit of government, village bishoprics
were common.
9
Bishoprics might also be established in centres of population
within a city territory. Bacatha, a village in the territory of
Philadelphia of Arabia, had its own bishop, and so had Marathas,
a village in the part of the territory of Samosata which lay across
the Euphrates. According to Sozomen village bishoprics were
common in Cyprus, and as the whole island was divided between
its twelve cities, these villages must have been within the city
territories. In Cyrenaica we know of five or six villages which
THE CHURCH
were bishoprics in addition to the six cities which constituted the
province. Military stations, which, though they might technically
lie in a city territory, were probably separately administered and
had a life of their own, tended to become bishoprics. Thus in
Egypt the fortresses of Philae, Syene and Elephantine, Babylon
and Scenae Mandron had their own bishops, and in the eastern
desert of Syria a number of military posts, such as Sura, Barbalissus,
Resapha, Euaria and Danaba became bishoprics, some being later
promoted to be cities. Ecclesiastical controversies encouraged the
foundation of village, as of city, bishoprics. Basil of Caesarea
consecrated Gregory of Nazianzus bishop of Sasima, a mere
posting station, in order to stake his claim to this territory as
against Anthimus of Tyana. In Mrica Catholics and Donatists
in their rival efforts to establish their hold on the rural population
consecrated bishops in the countryside. At the conference of earth-
age in 41 I the catholic bishop Alypius objected: 'it should be put on
the record that all these men have been consecrated bishops in
villas and estates, not in cities.' Petilian, a Donatist, replied:
'you, too, have many scattered through all the countryside'.lO
Village bishoprics were always in a small minority, and on the
whole their number did not greatly increase. They were less
stable than city bishoprics. A city, if it once acquired a bishop,
normally remained a see unless it fell into utter decay: Gregory
the Great had to suppress a number of old bishoprics in Italy,
but this was because the Lombard invasions had reduced the cities
to ruin. A village see might more easily lapse or be suppressed.
Gindarus, a large village in the territory of Antioch, had its own
bishop at the council of Nicaea, but no later bishop of Gindarus is
recorded and the see had certainly been suppressed by the time of
the Council of Chalcedon. Hydrax and Palaebisca, two villages in
Cyrenaica, had in the reign of V alens got a bishop ordained for
themselves, but when Synesius on his death asked them to elect
a successor, they refused. The old bishop of Erythrum, the village
under which they had formerly been, had been slack and they had
preferred to have an active man for themselves; now they liked the
present bishop of Erythrum and wanted to return to their old
allegiance. On the other hand, village bishoprics which grew in
importance were often promoted by the imperial government to
be cities : Resapha, which was not only a military post, but
possessed the shrine of the famous martyrs Sergius and Bacchus,
became 'Anastasiopolis.
11
The boundaries of a bishopric and a city did not necessarily
coincide, and disputes sometimes arose about rural
This obviously might happen when a village bishopric existed
BISHOPRICS
within a city territory, or when an extra-territorial area was shared
between two bishops of neighbouring cities. But since the
evangelisation of the countryside usually took place well after that
of the towns, it may sometimes have happened that missionaries
from one town unwittingly poached on villages belonging to
another. The Council of Chalcedon voted that rural parishes
should continue under the bishop to whom they were subject by
ancient custom; thirty years' prescription was definitive, disputes
of more recent origin were to be referred to the provincial council.
Pope Gelasius declared 'it is a well-known old rule that a territory
does not make a diocese' : ancient custom was to prevail despite
negligence or lapse of time, agreement between the parties or
orders from above. He also ordered that when a new church was
built on an estate, the bishop who had hitherto baptised the
inhabitants should consecrate it.
1
2
Where a city possessed a large territory its bishop sometimes
consecrated 'rural bishops' (xweentauonot) to look after parts of it.
The institution is very rarely recorded in the Western provinces,
and was not apparently very common in the East. The prestige
and the powers of 'rural bishops' were progressively reduced.
Fifteen attended the Council of Nicaea and signed its canons in
their own right : there were half a dozen at Chalcedon, but they
signed only as delegates for their bishops. A council held at
Antioch not long after Nicaea ruled that they should 'recognise
their limitations and administer the churches subject to them and
be content with their care and ministry: and ordain readers and
sub-deacons and exorcists and be content with their promotion,
and not dare to ordain a deacon without the bishop in the city to
which they and their territory are subject ... rural bishops are to be
consecrated by the bishop of the city to which they are subject' .13
Later in the century the canons of Laodicea declared that
'bishops ought not to be appointed in villages and country districts,
but itinerant inspectors those already appointed are
to do nothing without the consent of the bishop in the city'.
This canon was not generally observed: 'rural bishops' are still
recorded in the sixth century. They were probably never very
numerous. Basil of Caesarea is said by Gregory Nanzianzen in
one of his poems to have had fifty 'rural bishops', and though
the figure is certainly poetic licence, Basil, with all the regiones of
Cappadocia to administer, no doubt had a considerable number.
Caesarea was, however, very exceptional in having so large a
rural area dependent upon it, and in the ordinary way even great
sees probably had one or two rural bishops only, and the great
majority had none.l4
88o THE CHURCH
It had we have seen, been the practice in the third, and even
the century for the bishops of a district to hold
meetings. The Council of Nicaea confu:med and regulated this
practice. It enacted that councils of all the bishops of each
province should be held twice a year, before Lent and in the autumn,
in order to review excommunications enacted by the several bishops
and confirm or annul them by common consent. It also ordained
that when a see fell vacant, the new bishop should be con-
preferably by all the bishops of the province, or, if
this were impracticable, by at least three with the written consent
of the rest; if unanimity could not be with that of the
majority; and that no bishop be consecrated w1thout the consent
of the metropolitan.l5 . .
By this last term the fathers of N1caea meant the b1shop of the
metropolis or capital city of the province, as appears from a canon
of the Council of Antioch which further emphasises his authority.
'The bishops in each province ought to recognise that the bishop
who presides in the metropolis also undertakes the care of the
whole province, because people with business all congregate from
everywhere in the metropolis. Whence it is resolved that he should
be preferred in honour, and that the other bishops, according to
the ancient rule of our fathers which has prevailed, should do
nothing without him beyond the affairs which concern their
individual sees and the territory subject to them.'
16
These canons created or confirmed a hierarchy among bishops.
The metropolitan had now a certain authority over the other
bishops of the province. He presided at the provincial council,
and no common action could be taken without his consent: in
particular he had thus a veto on the appointment of bishops.
The provincial organisation also provided regular machinery for
settling disputes between neighbouring bishops, or between
bishops and their clergy or people. It also strengthened the control
of the bishops over the choice of new colleagues. If the rules were
kept, the clergy and people of the city could no longer get the
man of their choice consecrated by a bishop acting independently
of his colleagues, or even by three, the minimum number which
had been required by the Council of Aries. The metropolitan and
the majority of the provincial bishops could exercise a complete
vetoP
The rules laid down at Nicaea were not universally accepted.
In the African provinces, except for Proconsularis, where the
PROVINCES
881
primacy of Carthage was recognised, it was customary that the
senior bishop (by date of consecration) should preside at provincial
councils and exercise the authority normally wielded by the bishop
of the metropolis. This custom perhaps prevailed in some other
Western provinces in the fourth century, but later gave way to
the Nicene rule. In Africa it survived down to the sixth century.ts
The province of the ecclesiastical organisation was in origin
the administrative province of the empire, and the ecclesiastical
metropolis was its secular capital. As the Antiochene canon
suggests, it was practical convenience which suggested the rule:
people of the same province often had occasion to meet in its
metropolis. In general, except in the special cases of Egypt and
Suburbicarian Italy, which will be discussed below, the church in
the fourth and fifth centuries conformed its organisation to the
changing pattern of the secular provinces. Pope Innocent, it is
true, replied to Alexander of Antioch: 'with regard to your
question whether, when provinces are divided by imperial decree
so that there are two metropoleis, two bishops ought to be called
metropolitans, it is not proper that the church of God should be
changed in accord with the mutability of worldly needs, or should
be subject to the promotions or divisions which the emperor may
think fit to make for his own purposes'. In practice the church
had more good sense than the pope, and when provinces were
divided or reunited followed suit.l9
It was not until the sixth century that serious divergencies began
to arise. The ecclesiastical hierarchy had by then hardened and
Justinian refrained from disturbing vested interests. When he
reunited Honorias and Paphlagonia, he allowed the metropolitans
of Claudiopolis and Gangra to keep their old jurisdictions, and so
too with the metropolitans of Amaseia and Neocaesarea when he
merged Helenopontus and Pontus Polemoniacus. When he carved
a new province of Theodorias out of Syria I and II, he left its
cities under Antioch and Apamea for ecclesiastical purposes.
2
0
The boundaries of an ecclesiastical province did not always
coincide exactly with those of its civil prototype. Philadelphia was
in Arabia, but Bacatha, a village bishopric in its territory, belonged
to Palestine I. Samosata was in Euphratensis, but its village
Marathas in Osrhoene. An even more curious anomaly is recorded
in Gaul, where the bishop of Massilia, which was a city of Vien-
nensis, was in the latter part of the fourth century metropolitan of
the neighbouring Narbonensis Secunda. The bishops of the latter
province, however, became restive, and appealed to a council of
Italian bishops held at Turin about 400. The council felt that the
violation of the Nicene canons was too flagrant to be ignored, but
882 THE CHURCH
allowed the existing custom to prevail for the lifetime of the then
bishop of Massilia.21
The origins of these anomalies are unknown. In other cases
conflicts rose out of the ambition of bishops who ruled great
cities which were not capitals of provinces. Macarius of Jerusalem,
which might be regarded as the mother church of Christendom,
apparently felt it rather galling to be a mere provincial bishop,
subject to the authority of Eusebius, metropolitan of Caesarea,
the capital of Palestine. The Council of Nicaea hedged on this
question: 'whereas the ancient custom and tradition has prevailed
that the bishop of Aelia be honoured, let him have honorary
precedence, saving his own authority to the metropolitan'. A
century later Juvenal of Jerusalem was to be more aggressive
than Macarius, and to win spectacular success. A similar conflict
existed in Viennensis between Vienne, the civil metropolis, and
Aries, which was a more important city and moreover claimed to
be the oldest see in Gaul, from which its first bishop, St. Trophimus,
a disciple of St. Peter, had evangelised the rest of the country.
This dispute was also put before the Council of Turin, which gave
the rather evasive judgment that 'whichever of them can prove
that his city is the metropolis should hold the honour of the primacy
over the whole province', but recommended a compromise
whereby the two should divide the province amicably. This
struggle also had spectacular developments later. 22
Ambitious prelates often based their claints on imperial grants
of the honorary title of metropolis. Two such cases were debated
at the Council of Chalcedon. The dispute between Nicomedia and
Nicaea is particularly instructive. The rivalry between these two
great cities was traditional: since the first century A.D. they had
competed for precedence and honorific titles. Now the conflict
was extended into the ecclesiastical sphere. The bishop of Nicaea
claimed metropolitical jurisdiction over Basilinopolis. His argu-
ments are typical of the confused state of canon law. Basilinopolis
had once been a regio under Nicaea; Julian or someone had made
it a city, it is true, but it had preserved close links with Nicaea-its
original council was drawn from that of Nicaea. Then the bishop
of Nicaea always had consecrated the bishop of Basilinopolis: this
was flatly denied by the bishop of Nicomedia-Nicaea might
occasionally have poached, but such usurpations did not constitute
good precedents. Finally the bishop of Nicaea admitted that he
could have no claim if he were not a metropolitan, but alleged that
Nicaea had been made a metropolis by V alentinian and V alens.
The imperial institution was produced and read: but the bishop
of Nicomedia produced another constitution of the same emperors,
PATRIARCHATES
addressed to his own city, declaring that the promotion of Nicaea
was purely honorary and without prejudice to the rights of Nico-
media.23
The other case was more flagrant. Theodosius II had only a
year or two before given Berytus the title of metropolis. Eusta-
thius, the bishop of Berytus, on the strength of this document and
of a consequential ruling made by a council of bishops at Con-
stantinople, assumed jurisdiction over six cities hitherto subject
to the provincial metropolis, Tyre. Called to book at Chalcedon
he became very apologetic; he had, he alleged, solicited neither
the imperial constitution nor the decision of the bishops at Con-
stantinople. He had acted in perfect good faith, and would willingly
submit to the judgment of the great council.
24
Both these claims were quashed by the Council of Chalcedon,
but similar manoeuvres were sometimes crowned with success.
The civil metropolis of Pamphylia was Perge, but Side also claimed
the same title. At the Council of Ephesus in 43 r the bishop of Side
signed high on the list as a metropolitan. By 4 58 he had established
his jurisdiction over nearly half the civil province. Resapha, in
the fifth century still a see subject to Hierapolis, metropolis of
Euphratensis, had by the sixth become metropolitan of an ecclesias-
tical province of its own. Its promotion was probably due to
Anastasius, who raised it to the rank of city, and was no great
derogation of the rights of Hierapolis; for the sees which Resapha
ruled were all, it would seem, new creations, military stations in
the surrounding desert area promoted ad hoc.
25
In its famous sixth canon the Council of Nicaea recognised
certain higher jurisdictions. 'Let the ancient customs in Egypt
and Libya and Pentapolis prevail, so that the bishop of Alexandria
has authority over everything, since this is customary for the bishop
in Rome also. And similarly also at Antioch and in the other
provinces let their precedence be preserved to the churches.'
The objective of this canon was certainly to confirm the traditional
rights of Alexandria and the situation here is tolerably clear. No
metropolitans of the provinces into which Diocletian and his
successors divided Egypt are recorded, and the bishop of Alexan-
dria consecrated, and it would seem virtually appointed, all bishops
in the area covered by the old province of Egypt. This was clearly
a survival from the pre-Diocletianic regime, when Alexandria had
been the metropolis of all Egypt, and reflects the outstanding
position which the great city held in the province.
2
6
884 THE CHURCH
In. Pentapolis (Cyrenaica), which had always been a separate
provmce, the bishop of Ptolemais seems to have had the title of
metropolitan, but the bishops of Alexandria had already in the
th1rd century asserted their authority here also, and by the fourth
century they controlled the consecration of the local bishops.
Synesius when bishop of Ptolemais conducted the preliminary
proceedings at Olbia, a village see of Pentapolis, but he and two
local colleagues could not consecrate the candidate whom the
people had elected and they had approved: he had to ask Theo-
philus, the patriarch of Alexandria, for leave to consecrate. The
rule was no new one in his day. The consecration of Siderius to
Hydrax and Palaebisca in the reign of V alens had he reported to
been 1_1ncanonical, though later by Athana-
sms; he should either have been consecrated at Alexandria, or
by three local bishops under instructions from Alexandria. 27
The authority of the bishop of Alexandria over Egypt and
Pentapolis was in fact despotic. During Maximin's persecution
four protested, against Melitius' usurpation of
authority because It disregarded the honour of our great bishop
and father, Peter, on whom, by the hope that we have in our Lord
J Christ, we are all dependent'. At Chalcedon the Egyptian
declared they could not sign the dogmatic
decisions of the council Without the consent of their archbishop-
'the custom has in the Egyptian diocese that all
the bishops obey the archbishop of Alexandria'. 28
.The positi<:m . of Rome, cited as an analogy by the fathers of
N1caea, was surular. They were clearly not alluding to the general
primacy claimed by the bishops of Rome over the whole church
but to their special position in Italy, which the oldest Latin
of the canon makes more explicit-'urbis Romae similis mos est
ut in suburbicaria loca sollicitudinem gerat'. In the Suburbicarian
provinces of Italy, as in Egypt, there were no metropolitans, and
the pope all. this state of affairs clearly goes
back to the pre-D1oclet1amc penod when there were no Italian
Bu.t the popes had extended their authority over
S1clly also, wJ:U.ch, though an old province, had no metropolitan
b1shop. Sardm1a on the other hand, though in the Suburbicarian
diocese, had its own J?etropolitan, the bishop of Caralis, who
consecrated the other bishops of the island. 29
The primacy of Antioch to which the fathers of Nicaea alluded
was something much looser and vaguer. The bishop of Antioch
was looked up to as their leader by the bishops of all the provinces
between the and the bound2:ry of Egypt-an area which
later became the CIVIl diocese of Onens, but at this date had no
PATRIAR'CHATES
885
official existence, since down to the reign ofValens Oriens included
Egypt as well. Bishops from all this area assembled to consecrate
a new bishop of Antioch. But all the provinces had their own
metropolitans, and it is doubtful whether in the early fourth century
the bishops of Antioch had any clearly defined jurisdiction over
them. Pope Innocent I in 415 interpreted the Nicene canon as
meaning that the bishop of Antioch had the sole right of con-
secrating bishops in Oriens as did the popes of Rome and Alexan-
dria in the Suburbicarian provinces and in Egypt. But Antioch
never claimed such a prerogative. Its bishops, by this time,
claimed that metropolitans in the diocese of Oriens must be
consecrated by them, but even this right was probably a gradual
growth. The bishops of Cyprus, as recorded at the beginning of
this chapter, in 43 r successfully established their claim that their
metropolitan had by ancient custom never been consecrated by
the patriarch of Antioch. The Council of Antioch held soon after
Nicaea does not seem to recognise any authority higher than that
of the metropolitan of a province. When the provincial council
could not reach a unanimous verdict on charges brought against
a bishop, the metropolitan was to call in bishops from a neigh-
bouring province to resolve the problem; there is no appeal to
Antioch, as there was in the fifth century.
30
It is rather curious, seeing that Caecilian of Carthage attended the
Council of Nicaea, that the bishops made no allusion in the sixth
canon to the position of his see: they were perhaps unwilling to
commit themselves on a topic which the Donatist sclrism had
made controversial. As fat back as the third century, as Cyprian's
letters show, the bishop of Carthage had enjoyed the same kind of
primacy in the African provinces as Antioch enjoyed in Oriens.
He summoned councils not only from Africa proper, but from
Numidia and even Mauretania, and all the African bishops expected
to participate in the consecration of a bishop of Carthage. It 'Was
Caecilian's furtive consecration by one neighbouring bishop,
before the Numidians had arrived, which fired off the Donatist
schism.
31
The Council of Nicaea did something to clear up the chaos
which had hitherto prevailed in the higher levels of church govern-
ment. It gave its sanction to the provincial organisation under
the leadership of the metropolitan bishop, and accorded its
recognition to certain larger units of government, Egypt and the
Suburbicarian provinces under Alexandria and Rome. It also more
vaguely allowed primacy to Antioch and other unnamed sees.
But it left many problems unsolved. The rules for the consecration
of an ordinary bishop were clear, but what of metropolitans?
886 THE CHURCH
Could the bishops of a province consecrate their. own
as was done in many provinces, or was the sa.nctlon of some higher
authority required? Disputes between btshops or betwe_en. a
bishop and his clergy or people were to be settled by the provmctal
council with the consent of the metropolitan. But suppose the
provincial council could not agree, or the metrop_olitan were
himself a party to the dispute? There was no anctent custom
which regulated such problems, and the way. was left. open for
ambitious holders of great sees to extend. thetr .
The next great council, held at Constantmople m 381, did little
to resolve these problems. It merely ruled that in the five civil
dioceses of the Eastern empire, Thrace, Asiana, Pontica, Oriens
and Egypt, the bishops should manage their own affairs and not
interfere with those of another diocese. The autocratic powers of
Alexandria in Egypt were recognised, and in vaguer terms the
precedence of Antioch in Oriens, but in Thrace, Asiana and Pontica
no chief bishop was mentioned. The other important pronounce-
ment of the council was that the bishop of Constantinople should
have a primacy of honour second to the bishop of Rome, because
Constantinople was the. New Rome. But no atte:npt was made. to
define this honorary prunacy, or to accord the btshop any spectfic
rights or authority.
32
The church had a great belief in the value of councils, but here
again there were no accepted rules to determine who sum.mon
them and what jurisdiction they possessed. The Counctl of Ntcaea
had, as we have seen, put provincial councils on a regular .footing
and defined their competence. In some areas larger councils
sanctioned by tradition. The bishops of Rome and Alexandna
from time to time summoned councils from the Suburbicarian
provinces and from Egypt, and the bishop of Antioch from all the
diocese of Oriens. Councils of all the African provinces were regu-
larly held under the presidency of the bishop of Carthage. But
elsewhere there were no recognised authorities to convene larger
councils.
The imperial government often took the initiative. Only the
emperor could summon a general council of the whole church:
Constantine had established the precedent at Nicaea, and there was
in any case no central ecclesiastical authority which could act.
But the emperor also often summoned smaller councils to deal with
some problem on which a provincial council was incompetent
to decide: Constantine again set the precedent by calling the
councils of Rome and Aries to deal with the Donatist controversy
and those of Caesarea and Tyre to give judgment on Athanasius.
Such ad hoc councils were also often convoked by leading bishops,
PATRIARCHATES 887
but whether they were by imperial . or ep!scopal
initiative their competence was disputable, and thetr verdtct was
frequentiy challenged by defeated parties who, often truly, alleged
that they were packed.
33
.
The woeful lack of rules is well illustrated by the tragicomedy
which led to John Chrysostom's fall. Theophilus of Alexandria
was summoned by the emperor to to
John various char&es brought. agamst. him. He wtth a
bevy of Egyptian btshops, re_cetved vanous John,
and induced the emp.eror to a ?Im. When
John was cited the btshops stttmg wtth him objected: You ought
to come over to us, so that we can hear your .case fi::st. we
have charges against you under seventy heads, mvolvmg man!fest
illegalities, and we are a more numerous synod : .. you are
six from one province, and we forty from different provmces,
including seven metropolitans: and it is proper
should be judged by the more numerous and dtstlngwshed
according to the canons.'
34
Of the great sees which profited by this state of anarchy the
greatest was Rome. It would be impertinent to attempt to unravel
in a few paragraphs the tangled problem of the supremacy.
It will suffice to say that from an early date the btshops of Rome
claimed a pre-eminent position in the church,. and that they con-
sistently claimed it as successors of Peter, the of the Ap?stles.
Their primacy in honour was generally not only m the
West but in the East, where, however, tt was felt to be due to
them as bishops ?f. the capita! of But the rest .of the
empire was less willmg to admit the the Roman
claimed to legislate on doctrine and dtsctpline, and to exerctse _an
appellate jurisdiction throughout the The defeated
in a dispute naturally appealed to the btshop of Rome, as did
Athanasius, if they thought. that he could be persuaded to take
up their cause, but the verdict of Rome was by no means always
accepted.
35
At the Council of Sardica f;Iosius to get the
late jurisdiction of Rome uruversally recogrused. " any.
condem11ed by his colleagues refused to accept thetr declSlon, tf
it please you let 1:1s the of Peter the Apostle, at_ld
let the judges wnte to Julius the btshop ?f Rome so that the.tnal
can be reviewed by the bishops who netghbours of the
if need be and he himself may appomt those who shall revtew tt .
Again he' suggested that if any condem11ed. bishop to
Rome, the pope might order a by
bishops, or send priests of his own to dectde the tssue. These
888 THE CHURCH
proposals were adopted by the council, but in the East they were
not recognised and even in the West they received scant attention.
In 3 76 a Roman council under pope Damasus enacted similar
rules. In more distant provinces ordinary bishops were to be judged
by their metropolitan, but if a metropolitan were himself accused
he was to come to Rome for trial, or be tried by judges appointed
by the bishop of Rome; similarly there was to be an appeal against
a metropolitan's decision either to Rome or to at least fifteen
neighbouring bishops. But this same council complained to the
emperor about the persistent contumacy of bishops, and Gratian
thought it necessary to lend the aid of the secular arm, instructing
proconsuls and vicars and the praetorian prefects of Italy and Gaul
to arrest bishops who refused to recognise the papal supremacy
and send them under escort to Rome or the appropriate
council.
36
For a time the Roman see was rivalled by that of Milan. Milan
was at this period the administrative capital of the West, but its
ecclesiastical pre-eminence was due less to this fact than to the
dominating, not to say domineering, personality of its bishop,
Ambrose. His most extraordinary assertion of his authority was
to consecrate a bishop of Sirmium in 3 76. No canon or ancient
custom justified this interference of the bishop of Milan in the
affairs of a church which lay not only in another province but
another diocese. But having thus imposed his ascendancy on
Sirmium, which was not only the chief city ofPannonia but claimed
to be the 'head of all Illyricum', Ambrose went on to depose two
bishops of Dacia. These incidents well illustrate the way in which
great prelates exploited the anarchy of the church.
3
7
After Ambrose's death the empire of Milan soon crumbled, and
even during his lifetime hisjretentions in Illyricum were taken
over by Rome. Damasus ha already established an alliance with
Acholius, bishop of Thessalonica, but it was probably his successor
Siricius who first formally made the occupant of that great see,
the chief city of the Macedonian diocese, his vicar, instructing
him that 'none be permitted to presume to consecrate bishops in
lllyricum without your consent', and specifying that he should
if possible consecrate the bishops himself, or otherwise send
bishops of his choice with written instructions to do so. As no
canon or ancient custom authorised the pope himself to consecrate
bishops in Illyricum, it is difficult to see how Siricius could confer
that prerogative on the bishop of Thessalonica. But, despite
some resistance by the metropolitans of the provinces, the com-
bined authority of the great city of Thessalonica and of the apos-
tolic see prevailed, and the vicariate of Illyricum, renewed by
) .
0
PATRIAR,CHATES
successive popes in favour of successive bishops of Thessalonica
became an established institution. as '
In area it corresponded with two civil dioceses of Macedonia
and Dacia, which had been transferred by Gratian to Theodosius I
and from 395 became the Illyrian prefecture of the Eastern empire:
It was doubtless in order to reinforce their influence in this area
which might easily have drifted into the sphere of Constantinople'
that the popes instituted the vicariate. In 42 r, indeed,
no doubt by the bishop of Constantinople,
1ssued a constitution to the praetonan prefect ofillyricum, ordering
that in accordance with 'antiquity and the ancient canons of the
church' all ecclesiastical disputes throughout all the provinces of
Illyricum should be referred to the bishop 'of the city of Constan-
tinople, which rejoices in the prerogative of the old Rome'. How-
ever, Pope Boniface protested to Honorius, and Honorius wrote
to his nephew, and Theodosius II withdrew the claims of his
capital.
39
The device of the papal vicariate so successfully applied to
Illyricum was later extended with less happy results to Gaul.
The experiment seems to have been inspired not so much by the
desire of the popes to reinforce their authority as by the growing
ambitions of the bishops of Aries, who now aspired not only to
be metropolitans of Viennensis, but to extend their rule over the
two neighbouring provinces of Narbonensis I and II. In 417
Pope Zosimus declared that it was the ancient custom, justified by
the pre-eminence of St. Trophimus, that the bishop of Aries should
consecrate all bishops in all three provinces, and also gave the
present occupant of the see, Patroclus, exclusive authority to issue
letters of introduction (formatae) to clerics from all parts of Gaul
who wished to visit Rome. But Hilary, metropolitan of Nar-
bonensis I, and Proculus, bishop of Marseilles, who was still
exercising his anomalous metropolitical authority in Narbonensis
II, obstinately refused to recognise the ancient prerogative of
Aries alleged by Patroclus, and Popes Boniface and Celestine,
evidently perceiving that it did not enhance papal authority to
back very disputable claims, tacitly ignored Zosimus' ruling and
reasserted the rights of the metropolitans of each province. 40
Hilary, a later bishop of Aries, tried to revive the primacy of
his see, but his interference in the neighbouring provinces so
enraged Pope Leo that he deprived him even of his metropolitan
rights in Viennensis. The next bishop of Aries, Ravennius,
however, got up a petition from the bishops who had formerly
owed allegiance to his see. In this petition the claims of St. Tro-
phimus were again elaborated. The secular glories of Aries were
THE CHURCH
also stressed-it had been honoured by Constantine with his
name, it had been called by later emperors 'the mother of all the
Gauls', it was the seat of the praetorian of the Gauls,
and consuls had inaugurated their office there. Fmally the papal
records would show that its bishops had the right of consecrating
all bishops in the three provinces of Viennensis and Narbonensis
I and II and had been acco.rded authority over all Gaul. The petition
was only partially successful. Leo not only ignored the claims of
Aries to wider jurisdiction, but took into account the rival claims
of Vienne in Viennensis itself. The province was divided, four
neighbouring sees being allocated to Vienne and the rest to Aries.
Later, in 5 o8, Symmachus accorded to Caesarius of Aries a
vicariate extending not only over Gaul but Spain, authorising
him to summon councils to settle any problems which might arise
and to refer important issues to Rome. He was also to issue letters
of recommendation to any of the Gallic or Spanish clergy who
wished to visit Rome. This grant was apparently personal and
temporary. Before this time Simplicius had made Zeno, bishop
of Hispalis, his vicar in Spain, and in 517 Pope Hormisdas gave
the same honour to John, bishop of Illici, saving the rights of the
metropolitans; he later give a similar vicariate over Baetica and
Lusitania to Sallustius of Hispalis.
41
Meanwhile in the East the bishops of Constantinople were
extending their authority. The Council of Constantinople had, as
we have seen, in 381 accorded to the New Rome a primacy of
honour second only to the old Rome. In practice Constantinople
was favourably placed because in none of the three adjacent
dioceses of Thrace, Pontica and Asiana was there an outstanding
see which already exercised customary authority over it: Ephesus
came nearest to this position, but its authority seems to have been
confined to the provinces of Asia, Lydia and Caria and its rights
had never been formally recognised. In the second place the
bishop of Constantinople could readily obtain the backing of the
emperor, who naturally favoured the pretentious of his capital,
and thus could secure imperial constitutions enforcing his alleged
rights. And thirdly bishops, and especially metropolitans, from
all/arts of the Eastern empire frequently visited Constantinople,
an its bishop was thus able at all times to get together a council
to lend its authority to his decisions. The so-called 'visiting council'
(lvowwvaa <r6vooo,;) of Constantinople became a regular institution.
The imperial commissioners at Chalcedon raised some doubts as to
its status, asking 'if the congress of visitors in the imperial city
may be called a council'. Anatolius of Constantinople explained:
'A custom has long prevailed that holy bishops visiting the re-
PATRIARCHATES
.City when occasion demru;tds meet about any
ecclesiastical busmess that comes up and decide the several issues
and give answers to petitioners. So no innovation has been made
on my part and the visiting holy bishops who convened according
to custom did not produce a new rule either.'42
The story of John Chrysostom's intervention in Asia well
illustrates the way in which the authority of the see of Constan-
tinople grew. Eusebius, bishop of Valentinianopolis in Asia,
presented a series of charges against his metropolitan, Antoninus
of Ephesus, to John before a 'visiting council' comprising twenty-
two bishops. John was, according to his biographer, Palladius,
reluctant to take up the case, but eventually charged Antoninus,
who was present, before the council, which decided that there was
a prima facie case. John accordingly on its advice sent three of
its members to hold a local investigation. But Antoninus bought
his accuser off and the case collapsed. Then Antoninus died and
the clergy of Ephesus and the bishops of Asia asked John to clear
up the scandals of the see. John went down to Ephesus and held a
council of seventy bishops from Asia, Lydia and Caria, consecrated
a new metropolitan of Ephesus, and deposed several bishops and
consecrated others in their place.43
John's successors continued to extend their authority. We hear
of Atticus visiting Nicaea to consecrate a bishop. He also appointed
Silvanus metropolitan of Philippopolis in Thrace and, when
Silvanus could not stand the Thracian climate and abandoned his
see, later made him bishop of Treas. In this case the people of
Troas came spontaneously to Constantinople to ask for a bishop.
At Cyzicus the people were more independent. Atticus had to
obtain an imperial constitution to enforce his claims, and when his
successor Sisinnius on the strength of this document consecrated
Proclus bishop of Cyzicus, the Cyzicenes, declaring that the grant
had been personal to Atticus, got a local candidate consecrated and
refused to accept Proclus. Proclus later became bishop of Con-
stantinople, and as such was asked for a bishop by the people of
Caesarea in Cappadocia, and consecrated Thalassius to that great
see.
44
There were therefore ample precedents when the Council of
Chalcedon enacted that the bishop of Constantinople should
consecrate all metropolitans in the three dioceses of Thrace,
Pontica and Asiana. The canon professed to be a mere clarification
of the canon of 381, which had given the New Rome primacy
next after old Rome: the council 'judged it reasonable that the
city honoured with the presence of the emperor and the senate
and enjoying equal precedence with the older imperial Rome
BB
892 THE CHURCH
should also like it be magnified in ecclesiastical affairs, being
second after it'. The delegates of the bishop of old Rome lodged
a strong protest, and Pope Leo himself refused to recognise the
new canon, but in the East it was quietly accepted. The papal
delegates suspected that the bishops affected had given their
consent under pressure, but when the question was put by the
imperial commissioners the bishops all replied that they had
signed willingly, and several metropolitans-those of Myra,
Amaseia, Gangra, Synnada and Aphrodisias-declared that they
themselves had been consecrated by the bishop of Constantinople,
some adding that as many as three of their predecessors had also
owed their consecration to him. 45
There was only one dissentient voice, that of Eusebius, the
metropolitan of Ancyra, which as the seat of the vicar of Pontica
had achieved a certain primacy over the neighbouring provinces.
'I have my story to tell without prejudice to the general view.
I have shown in practice that I am far from desiring to consecrate.
Peter the holy bishop who has just testified is bishop of Gangra,
and I consecrated his predecessor. All the city came to me at
Ancyra and brought the resolutions. I answered "I am not one of
those who wish to consecrate". They reminded me of those who
had previously been consecrated by the bishop of Ancyra, one,
two, three of them. I said, "Whatever you say to me I am not
going to involve myself in litigation". Then they went and asked
the blessed Proclus.' Eusebius, after airing his grievance, allowed
the customary rights of his see to lapse. 46
Ephesus might have caused more trouble, but fortunately there
was no bishop of Ephesus at the moment, two rival claimants
having both been deposed at an earlier session. There had been
argument then as to who should consecrate a new bishop. The
imperial commissioners had asked: 'Let the holy council declare
where the canons require that the bishop of the holy church of
Ephesus be consecrated.' The bishops replied: 'In the province,'
and the bishop of Magnesia asserted: 'There have been twenty-six
bishops from the holy Timothy to the present day. All were
consecrated at Ephesus.' A priest of Constantinople objected:
'The blessed John, bishop of Constantinople, went to Asia and
deposed fifteen bishops and consecrated others in their place;
and Memnon was confirmed here.' The archdeacon of Constan-
tinople added: 'Castinus was consecrated here too. Heracleides
and others were consecrated with the approval of the archbishop
here. The blessed Proclus likewise consecrated Basil.' The case
was left open at the earlier session and now went by defauJt.47
The council also accepted a compromise agreed between
PATRIARCHATES 893
Maximus of Antioch and Juvenal of Jerusalem. The latter had
b.een exploitin.g the antiquity of his see to challenge the vested
nghts ?f Ant10ch; he had even stated at Ephesus in 431 that
'according to apostolic precedent and tradition' it was the custom
that the throne of Antioch itself should be guided and judged by
'the apostolic throne of the church of Jerusalem' and he had
actually claimed jurisdiction over the three PalestJnes the two
Phoenicias and Arabia. He now agreed to split the and
keep the three Palestines only. With the council's approval the
imperial commissioners ratified this settlement, and declared null
the various imperial constitutions which the rival parties had
obtained to fortify their claims.4s
The constitution of the church in the Eastern half of the empire
underwen.t o_ne further major change. Justinian, wishing to
hon?c:r his b:rthplace, not ?nlY. made it a city under the style of
Prrma, but gave rts brshop the rank of archbishop with
authonty over all the Dacian diocese, which was withdrawn
from the jurisdiction of Thessalonica: later in deference to the
of J?ope he ag:reed that the archbishop of
JustJniana Pnma should, like the brshop of Thessalonica hold his
authority as papal vicar. The Eastern parts of the empire were
thus divided into six units. The four patriarchs, as they had come
to be caf!ed, ru!ed areas ?f very different size. Constantinople
had subJect to rt three dioceses, Thrace, Pontica and Asiana
Alexandria one, EgyPt; Antioch the greater part of Oriens;
Jerusalem three provmces carved out of Oriens. Two papal vicars
of Thessalonica and Justiniana Prima each ruled a diocese Mace-
donia and Dacia respectively. The province of alone
ren:ained subject. to no .higher authority. The powers of the
van? us supreme brshops differed. The patriarchs of Constantinople,
Antr?ch and Jerusalem consecrated only the metropolitans of
provmces and left to them the consecration of ordinary bishops.
The patriarch of Alexandria, by ancient custom, consecrated all
bishops under his sway. The papal vicar of Thessalonica, since the
days of Pope Leo, himself consecrated only metropolitans, but his
consent was necessary for ordinary episcopal consecrations. The
vicar of Dacia no doubt followed the same practice.49
In the Western parts church government did not achieve even
this degree of order. The pope continued to rule the Suburbicarian
provinces directly, consecrating all bishops in person or by proxy.
In Africa Carthage retained its ill-defined primacy. Here there
was no question of the bis:1op of Carthage consecrating metro-
politans, since the senior bishop in each province still exercised
metropolitical rights. But though ill-defined the primacy of
THE CHURCH
Carthage was real, and the Mrican church strongly resented any
outside interference. It was gel!erally to .the
judgment of the popes on quest10ns of doctrme and discipline,
but preferred to manage its own affairs by frequent couJ?cils,
held under the presidency of Carthage. When pope Zos1mus
endeavoured to exercise jurisdiction in the case of Apiarius, the
African bishops protested sharply and forbade appeals overseas.
50
Elsewhere no unit larger than the province developed, and no
authority higher than the metropolitan. This was no doubt d?e
to the dominating position of the popes, whose influence steadily
grew. There was an increasing tendency to refer all disputes to
Rome, and to look to Rome for guidance. The popes on their
side preferred in general to deal with metropolitans direct: the
vicariate of Thessalonica was designed to meet a special danger.
It was safer to allow no see to acquire the degree of authority
which Carthage enjoyed and which might tempt it to undue
independence.
The revenue from which the churches supported their clergy,
maintained their buildings, and distributed charity to the poor,
was originally derived entirely from voluntary offerings from the
faithful. These offerings (in Latin called oblationes, in Greek
xaenorpoetat), though later overshadowed by income from endow-
ments, always continued to be an important part of the revenues
of the churches, and are frequently mentioned in the sixth century
and later. They might be either in kind or in cash. They do not
seem to have taken the form of regular first fruits or tithes.
51
Tithes and first fruits are occasionally mentioned in vague
terms, which may imply that they were synonymous with offerings:
usually the language seems to be figurative. They are specifically
mentioned only twice. John Cassian tells of a pious Egyptian
farmer who with his neighbours brought tithes and first fruits of
his crops to the abbot of a monastery for distribution to the poor.
In Noricum Severinus persuaded people to give tithes for the relief
of the poor, ruined by barbarian inroads. It is noteworthy that in
both cases the offering was not made to the church of the parish
or the city, and appears to have been an additional and exceptional
act of piety. In 567 the second Council of Tours urged the faithful
in Gaul, as part of a special act of repentance, to give a tenth of all
their property to the church. It was not until 58 5 that the second
Council of Matisco ordained that the 'ancient custom', based on
scriptural precedent, of paying a regular tithe to the clergy,

CHURCH FINANCES
should be revived, after having, as the bishops admitted, fallen
almost entirely into desuetude. Tithe, in fact seems to have been
first initiated in Merovingian Gaul in the latter part of the sixth
century: it is strange that the clear biblical precedent for it was
never exploited earlier. 52
The offerings of the faithful before that date appear to have been
left unregulated, and they were, it would seem, in general really
voluntary. An imperial law, Jrobably of Anastasius, gives the
first hint that the clergy applie pressure to the faithful. It forbids
bishops, rural bishops and itinerant priests to force the laity to
pay the 'offerings of the so-called local first fruits or oblations',
and 'exact them like a tax', by excommunicating or anathematising
those who would not pay or denying them the eucharist or baptism.
Whole villages or estates, the emperor had been informed, had
been so treated. This must stop; gifts must be voluntary, for the
giver might be poor or have had a bad harvest. 5
3
Already in the third century the churches had begun, by what
legal title is disputed, to acquire property. At first they owned
only their places of worship and burial grounds: these are alone
mentioned in the letter whereby Gallienus restored the confiscated
property of the churches. But Maximin after the Great Persecution
restored not only the churches but 'any houses or lands which
were heretofore in the ownership of the Christians', and Con-
stantine alludes to gardens and houses in his first edict of restitution:
Licinius' edict of Nicomedia clearly distinguishes churches from
other property of the Christian community.
54
From Constantine's time the property of the churches grew
rapidly and steadily. He himself set the example by munificent
donations of land and houses to the churches of Rome and other
Italian cities, and in 321 he expressly legalised bequests to the
church. His example was followed by many of his subjects, and,
as Christianity spread to the wealthier classes, gifts and bequests
became more substantial. The churches received vast properties
from pious members of the Roman nobility like Melania, who
gave to the see of Tagaste an estate larger than the territory of that
city. It also profited from countless small bequests from humble
folk, such as are recorded in the Ravenna papyri. It seems to
have become almost common form for every will to contain a
bequest to the church; even Flavius Pousi, a humble civil servant
of the province of Arcadia, who owned nothing except his house,
furniture and clothes, left half his house to the church.
55
The private property of the clergy often swelled ecclesiastical
endowments. By a law of 434 the estate of any cleric who died
intestate without heirs passed to his church. Apart from this
THE CHURCH
bishops often made their church their heir. Gregory
Naz1anzen left his whole estate, apart from minor legacies, to the
church of Nazianzus, and Caesarius bequeathed half his estate to his
see of Aries. An African council in 409 regarded this as a moral
obligation, anathematising any bishop who left his property to
outsiders other than his kin, rather than to his church. 56
It was often hard to distinguish a bishop's private property
from that of his see. Not long after 32 5 the Council of Antioch
ordained that an exact schedule of both must be kept, so that on
the bishop's death neither the church should be defrauded nor his
heirs put to the trouble of suing for what was their own. It was
also often a moot point whether gifts or bequests to a bishop or
priest were meant for him personally or for his church. The
Council of Carthage in 421 allowed bishops and clergy to dispose
as they liked of personal gifts and inheritances, but enacted that
they must confer upon their church any lands which they bought.
Justinian ruled that a bishop might leave to his heirs or dispose
by will only of the property of which he was possessed before his
consecration, together with what he might have since inherited
from near relatives: the rest was to go to his church. This rather
severe rule was enforced in the West by Pope Gregory the
Great. 5
7
There was always a danger of bishops endowing their poor
relations with church property. The Canons of the Apostles,
which represent church practice in the East at the end of the fourth
century, allow bishops to maintain poor relatives from church
funds, but not to alienate church property to them; despite which
Ibas of Edessa, if the complaints brought against him by his clergy
are true, bestowed not only church revenues but inheritances on
his brothers and nephews. There were less reputable reasons for
the alienation of church property than the family affection of
bishops. In the hotly contested elections to the apostolic see rival
candidates bid for the support of influential backers by promises
of church lands; under Odoacer and Theoderic this abuse reached
scandalous proportions, and these two kings, the Roman senate,
and several Roman councils passed stringent rules against it. But
the main danger to the estates of the church was that as they grew
attracted eyes of great men, whose displeasure
b1shops were afraid to mcur or whose favour they wished to gain. 58
The first imperial law against the alienation of church property
was issued by Leo in 470. It applied only to the church of Con-
stantinople, which was particularly subject to pressure from the
great, and it absolutely banned all sales, gifts or exchanges. It
permitted the church to cede the usufruct of a property to an

CHURCH FINANCES
applicant for a fixed period or for his life, but only on condition
that on returning the estate he also gave to the church another of
equal value. Anastasius extended the ban to the whole patriarchate
of Constantinople, but mitigated it by allowing alienation for
reasonable causes under proper control. Sales or mortgages were
allowed in order to pay debts, to purchase a more valuable estate,
or for urgent repairs, exchanges when a better property was thereby
acquired, perpetual emphyteutic leases provided that the rent was
not reduced, or when the property was in its present condition
valueless. All such transactions had to be registered in the presence
of all the clergy of the institution concerned before the magister
census in Constantinople or the defensor in other cities. 59
Justinian revoked Anastasius' law, and tightened up Leo's,
applying it to the whole empire. The ban on sales and gifts had
been evaded by the grant of long or even perpetual leases. Jus-
tinian absolutely forbade one form of lease, the ius colonarium,
whereby the tenant virtually bought the estate, holding it in
perpetuity subject to a small rent charge. He limited the term of
ordinary leases to twenty years, and of emphyteutic leases to three
lives (those of the original tenant and his sons and grandsons)
and he insisted that in the latter the rent must not be reduced by
more than one-sixth. Exchanges were permitted only with the
emperor himself, who guaranteed to give in return lands of equal
or greater value. so
These rules proved excessively rigid. Justinian had soon to
allow sales of land to pay arrears of taxes and grants of land to
liquidate private debts. The church of Jerusalem obtained a special
law to enable it to carry through a very profitable transaction.
It had acquired for 3 8o lb. gold a property bringing in 30 lb. a year.
Part of the purchase money had been raised by subscription, but
part borrowed, and the debt could readily be paid by selling houses
belonging to the church at prices representing fifty times their
annual value. Special legislation was also needed for the churches
of Moesia and Scythia. As one of their bishops explained, they
often received legacies of real property which the testator wished
to be sold to raise money for the redemption of prisoners or the
relief of the destitute, and such property moreover often consisted
of half-ruined houses far from the cities, and vineyards liable to
devastation, which could not be profitably let. Later, in 5 44,
Justinian allowed all the churches except that of Constantinople
to grant perpetual emphyteutic leases, and even the church of
Constantinople was permitted to give perpetual leases of ruinous
house property, the tenant paying either a third of the old rents,
or half the old rents of such houses as he rebuilt.
61
THE CHURCH
There are a number of clauses in Justinian's legislation which
betray where the real danger lay. He forbade those holding offices
at the capital, and later all those in positions of power, to acquire
church lands. He prohibited the issue of personal rescripts
authorising those holding offices or at court to do so. The emperor
also found that the clause permitting the crown to make exchanges
with the clrurches was exploited by petitioners, who asked the
crown to obtain lands in this way and regrant them to themselves.
62
The contemporary legislation by ecclesiastical councils in the
West was somewhat less rigid. According to the rule prevailing
in Africa a parish priest might not sell property without the leave
of his bishop, and a bishop had to obtain the permission of his
priests and of the provincial council. A bishop was allowed by
the Council of Agathe in j o6 to alienate church property in cases of
necessity with the approval of three colleagues. A later council in
517 insisted on the metropolitan's consent, and the Council of
Massilia in j 3 3 held that it was contrary to the canons for a bishop
to sell property without the leave of the provincial council. On
the other hand the Council of Agathe allowed a bishop to free
church slaves and grant them land, vineyards or house property
up to the value of 20 solidi. He might also grant small and less
profitable properties in usufruct, or even sell 'small parcels of
land or minute vineyards of little use to the church, situated
far from it'.
63
The rules were evidently rather laxly observed, for many
councils enacted that if a bishop did not leave his private estate
to his church, he by his will, or his heirs and assigns, must com-
pensate the church for suclr lands or slaves as he had alienated
during his term of office. But in Merovingian Gaul, as in the East,
the main threat to the property of the church came from the great.
A council held in j 3 j denounced those who petitioned kings for
church lands, and another held at Paris about twenty years later
complained bitterly of petitioners 'who have usurped the property
of the church by unscrupulous underhand dealing under cover
of the royal munificence'.
64
Church lands enjoyed certain fiscal privileges. With a few very
special exceptions, such as Thessalonica, the churches paid the
regular land tax, the canonica inlatio, but they were exempt from
all additional payments, by way of extraordinaria or sordida munera.
This immunity was in 423 curtailed when they were made liable
for the repair of roads and bridges.65
The churches also from the reign of Constantine received
subsidies from the state. According to Theodoret Constantine
issued general instructions to all provincial governors to allocate

CHURCH FINANCES
annual grants in each city for the support of virgins, widows and
the clergy. These grants were cancelled by Julian, but revived
by Jovian, who however reduced them to one-third of their original
amount. The reduced grants were, according to Theodoret, still
paid in his own day, and his statement is confirmed by a law of 45 r,
which orders the continuance of 'the salaries which have hitherto
been paid from the treasury to the holy churches in various kinds'.
These subsidies are spoken of as annonae, and were apparently in
the form of foodstuffs, especially corn. They are not often men-
tioned either in the legal or the ecclesiastical sources. Athanasius
speaks of the corn which 'had been granted by the father of the
emperors for the assistance of widows separately for Libya and for
some places in Egypt', and the government grant of corn for the
poor in Libya is said to have been sold by Dioscorus and the
money embezzled. This suggests that Constantine' s grants were
perhaps not so systematic as Theodoret represents them, but
they must have been very general. They still continued at the
end of the sixth century: Gregory the Great complained to the
praetorian prefect of Italy on the suspension of the government
subsidy (annonae et consuetudines) made to the centre for poor relief
(diaconia) at Naples.66
On the management and distribution of ecclesiastical revenues
we know very little until the late fifth and sixth centuries, and by
that time the financial organisation of the churches had become
exceedingly complex. In early times the position was simple. In
most cities there was one church oniy, served by a single group of
clergy under the immediate control of the bishop, and he was
responsible for allocating the available funds to the upkeep of the
fabric and the lighting of the building, the distribution of charity
to the poor, and the maintenance of himself and his staff. As the
congtegation grew more churches were built in the larger cities;
at Alexandria there were already quite a number-Epiphanius
mentions eight-when Arius began to preach his doctrine. At
Alexandria a priest was permanently allocated to eaclr church-
Arius had that of Baucalis-and at Rome similarly in 341 Athana-
sius identifies a church as that 'where the priest Vito conducted
the services', while Pope Innocent speaks of the priests in charge
of the several clrurches.67
This practice did not necessarily, however, involve any financial
complications. The additional churches could be, and probably in
early times usually were, regarded as annexes of the principal
church, and they and their clergy maintained out of the common
fund. Sometimes, however, benefactors who built new churches
endowed them with lands for their maintenance. It was indeed
900 THE CHURCH
highly desirable that they should do so, as otherwise their munifi-
cence might burden the church with maintenance charges which
it could not afford, and eventually it was made obligatory. By the
end of the fifth century the popes would not license the bi.shops
under their jurisdiction to consecrate a new church unless lt had
an endowment sufficient to cover its repairs and lighting and
maintenance of its clergy, and in 541 the Council of Orleans la1d
down the same rule for Gaul, and in 5 72 the Council of Bracara
enacted it for Spain. In the East Justinian enforced the rule by
an imperial novel.
68
A distinction thus grew up between what were called in Latin
tituli, churches which were financed from the bishop's central fund
and served by his clergy, . and parochiae or dioeceses, churches
supported by their own endowments. The distinction is clearly
brought out by a decision of Pope Pelagius I. John, the bishop of
Nola, had asked his leave to sell the plate of the church of Suessula,
'which appears to be a parochia of the church of Nola', in order to
meet its expenses. The pope deprecated the step, and ruled that
Suessula should be made a titu!us of Nola: priests on the establish-
ment of the Nolan church should be seconded to serve it, and its lands
should be cultivated by the men of the Nolan church. In the East
Justinian draws a similar distinction between the position when
founders have endowed their churches and when 'the church of the
city itself supplies salaries both to itself and to other churches'.
69
Separately endowed churches someti:nes
with the central group. Constantme accordmg to the L1ber
Pontificalis settled enormous endowments on each of the basilicas
which he built at Rome, but they were later classified as titu!i,
so that their revenues went into the central funds of the papacy.
The Roman titu!i had, however, some separate endowments. In
the rules laid down in 5 02 against the alienation of church property
'all who are or shall be priests of the churches throughout the tituli
of the city of Rome' were forbidden to alienate 'whatever belongs
to the titu!i or the aforesaid church'. The endowments of the tituli
were partly estates of the Roman church earmarkedfortheirupkeep,
like the Massa Aqua Salvias which Pope Gregory transferred from
the patrimonium Appiae to the basilica of S. Paul for the mainten-
ance of its lights, partly lands given or bequeathed by private
benefactors to a titu!us, like the Massa Paganicensis given by
Flavia Xanthippa to the basilica of S. Maria Dei Genetrix.
70
At Constantinople Justinian draws a threefold distinction.
There was the Great Church, which comprised four churches-
St. Sophia, St. Helena, St. Theodore (built by Sporacius, consul
in 452), and the Blessed Virgin (built by the Empress Verina)-
901
but was administered as a single unit and served by one body of
clergy. Secondly there were churches 'whose maintenance the Great
Church undertakes', which nevertheless had their separate establish-
ments of clergy, as laid down by their founders; and thirdly there were
churches 'which do not have their supply and maintenance from the
Great Church'. The second category appear to be like the Roman
titu!i, originally independent churches which had been absorbed. 71
In general the town churches tended to be titu!i, either because
they had initially been built by the bishop from central funds or
by subscription, or by subsequent amalgamation. The Council of
Orleans in 5; 8 indeed laid down the general rule that gifts bestowed
on basilicas in the cities should be at the immediate disposition
of the bishop, who should have discretion how much of them he
should allocate to the repair or maintenance of the basilica in
question, whereas local custom should be observed about the
revenues of parishes or basilicas in the villages. Rural churches
were on the other hand normaily parochiae. In villages of peasant
proprietors they were generally founded by local initiative; at the
village of Libanus the church was built by the joint labour of the
inhabitants. On great estates it was normally the owners who built
and endowed the churches. They usually no doubt did so from
motives of piety. John Chrysostom, who found the great land-
owners of Constantinople backward in doing their duty, urged
them to build churches and endow priests on their estates, if not
for Christian zeal, for prudential reasons; the priest would preach
obedience to the peasants and prevent unrest. In sixth-century
Spain some landowners built churches as a commercial speculation,
going fifty-fifty with the priest on the offerings. 72
There was a similar distinction between the charitable institutions
run by the bishops from central funds, and those privately endowed.
The churches had from their inception devoted some of their
income to the care of the sick, hospitaiity to strangers, and the
maintenance of orphans and widows and of the poor in general.
As their wealth increased they built and maintained large numbers
of hospitals, orphanages, almshouses and hostels. Sometimes this
was done on the initiative of the bishop; Gregory Nazianzen lauds
the zeal of Basil, whose charitable institutions added a new quarter
to the city of Caesarea. But many private benefactors established
and endowed institutions. It is plain from the legislation of
Anastasius and Justinian that orphanages, hospitals and alms-
houses often owned lands of their own from whose rents they
were maintained. Cyril of Scythopolis records that Justinian built
a hospital of a hundred beds at Jerusalem, and settled on it an
annual revenue of 1,850 solidi.
73
CHURCH FINANCES
902 THE CHURCH
The central fund of the see was originally managed by the
bishop himself, but later it became customary, in the East at any
rate, for him to appoint one of his as manager
this was made the rule by the CounCil of Chalcedon to av01d the
bishop's being involved in any scandal .. In the West
the bishop seems generally to have remained responstble for church
finance. In the allocation of the revenues a dividend system was
usual, whereby certain proportions of the total revenue were
allotted to various purposes. The system seems to have been an
old tradition in the Western churches. In Africa it prevailed in the
middle of the third century; when Cyprian ordained two confessors
as readers, he gave them the status of priests 'so that they may be
honoured with the same fees as priests and share in the monthly
divisions in equal proportions'. Cyprian also alludes to his own
proportion of the church revenue.
74
The scheme favoured by the popes, which they applied in the
Suburbicarian provinces and advocated elsewhere from the end of
the fifth century, was to divide all the revenues from rents and
offerings (in the cathedral and its tituli) into four portions, one _for
the bishop, one for the clergy (the cardtnales of the central estabbsh-
ment), one for the repair and lighting of the churches (the
and its titu!i), and one for the poor. There were local and reg10nal
variations. At Ravenna Pope Felix IV ruled that the bishop should
have all the extras in kind paid by tenants of the church; the meat,
poultry, eggs, cheese, honey and so forth thus provided would help
the bishop in his duties of hospitality. In Spain in 572 the Council
of Bracara laid down a threefold division, for the bishop, the
clergy and the fabric; the special foundations, supplemented by
voluntary donations from the bishop and clergy, were presumably
deemed sufficient for the poor. In Gaul the Council of Orleans in
5 n divided the offerings on the altar half and half between the
bishop and his clergy, but reserved all the rents from endowments
to the bishop, who was to spend them at his discretion. 75
The quarter allocated to the clergy was in its turn divided into
shares, which varied according to the recipients' grade. The local
rules again varied: At Catana the lower clergy claimed that one-
third should go to the priests and deacons, and two-thirds to them-
selves; but the priests and deacons protested that according to the
custom of their church they ought to get two-thirds and the rest
one-third.
76
In the East Severus of Antioch alludes to distributions; he
declares that aged priests must not be excluded from them. But
they evidently played a minor part in clerical incomes; it was
probably only the offerings and not the total revenues, as in the
CHURCH FINANCES
West which were shared out. It is at any rate plain that by the
sixth 'century it was usual to assign fixed stipends to the various
grades of the clergy. This appears from the financial difficulties of
the Great Church of Constantinople in the sixth century. Owing
to the increase of the clergy above the establishment, Justinian
tells us the church had exceeded its income and run into debt.
Severu; of Antioch makes the same complaint about his church,
and Justinian states that the trouble was general. On the dividend
system this difficulty could not arise; the shares of the clergy
would have sunk, but the total expended on their stipends would
have remained the same. Bishops probably also received fixed
stipends. Theodore of Syceon as bishop of Anastasiopolis had an
allocation of 365 solidi a year, which is obviously a solidus a day,
and not a proportion of the revenue of the see.
77
The finances of the parochiae or dioeceses and of the
charitable institutions were under the general control of the bishop,
but the degree to which be interfered with them in practice varied
greatly. In the East Anastasius made the managers of churches
and the administrators of institutions, together with the clergy
who served in them, responsible even for so serious a step as
alienating a part of their endowments in case of urgent need, and
only added that the bishop's consent must be obtained if it was
the local custom.7S
In Africa a council enacted in 421 that a priest might not alienate
the lands of the church which he served without his bishop's
leave. This rule was re-enacted by several sixth-century Gallic and
Spanish councils, and in these regions the bishops claimed a tighter
control over local endowments, and showed a strong tendency
to absorb them. The Council of Orleans in j 11 ruled that all lands
or slaves given or bequeathed to parishes fell under the bishop's
control. This rule bad its dangers. The Council of Carpentoratum
in 52 7 had to rule that if the church of the city was adequately
endowed, the bishop must allow the rents of property left to
parish churches to be used for their repair and the
of their clergy: it did, however, allow poorly endowed bishops to
transfer to their own churches the surplus revenues of well-endowed
parishes, provided that enough was lefr for their repair at?-d salary
bills. In 54 5 the fifth Council of Orleans had to pass a special canon
to assure King Childebert that the bish<;>P of wo.uld not
transfer to his own church the lands with which the king had
recently endowed the hostel which had been built in that city.
In Spain the third Council of Toledo in j 89 denounced those who,
when the churches they had built were consecrated, contrary to
the canons demanded that .the endowments which they had given
THE CHURCH
to them should not pass under the bishop's control. A later Council
of Toledo, held in 633, explains why they did so. Bishops were
liable, it admitted, to take over the endowment, leaving nothing
for the repairs of the church or the pay of the priests. The council
forbade this abuse, but still insisted that donors must recognise
the bishop's control of the endowment. 79
The Gallic and Spanish bishops were not only prone on occasion
to pocket the endowments of parochial churches. They also made
a regular claim to a third share in the offerings made in them.
In Gaul the first Council of Orleans laid down this rule in 5 II.
In Spain it was declared by the Council of Tarraco five years later
to be an ancient custom that the bishop took a third of the parochial
offerings at his annual visitation; it is implied that he was supposed
to devote it to the repair of the local cburch. The Council of
Bracara in 572 enacted on the contrary that the bishop was not
to take the third of the offerings, whicb was to be reserved for the
lighting and repair of the churcb; 'for if the bishop takes that
third part, he has taken away the lights and the sacred fabric'.
The fourth Council of Toledo, however, in 63 3 allowed the bishops
a third not only of the offerings but of the rents.so
We possess very few figures for ecclesiastical revenues earlier
than the sixth century. The wealth of the churches grew enor-
mously between the beginning of the fourth century and the sixth,
but there is no means of estimating how rapid the growth was.
There were at all times great contrasts between the richest and the
poorest sees, and these were probably accentuated with the progress
of time, since the great sees attracted more numerous and larger
?enefactions. The churcb of Rome was already relatively wealthy
m the. middle of the third century, when it had, besides its bishop,
46 pnests, 7 deacons, 7 sub-deacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists,
readers and doorkeepers, and over I, 5 oo widows and poor 'all of
whom the grace and bounty of the Lord feeds'. But Constantine's
donations transformed the situation; the rents of the lands which
he. gave to th.e. Roman church totalled well over 400 lb. gold.
It 1s not surpnsmg that fifty years later Pope Damasus lived in so
grand a style that one of the great pagan senators of Rome, Agorius
Praetextatus, could say to him (in jest, it is true): 'Make me bishop
of Rome and I will become a Christian tomorrow.' But Rome was
in a class by itself. Constantine' s benefactions to other Italian sees
were on quite a different scale, ranging from about ro lb. gold a
year for Capua and Naples to about 2 5 lb. for Albanum; Ostia
THE WEALTH OF THE CHURCH
also received about 2 5 lb. from the combined benefactions of the
emperor and of Gallicanus. Ammianus Marcellinus points the
contrast between the pope and the bishops of the smaller Italian
towns, who lived in a very modest style.sl
According to John Chrysostom the church of Antioch in his
day enjoyed a revenue which was comparable with that of one of
the wealthier residents of the city, but not of the very richest.
Augustine told Albina that 'my paternal estate can hardly be
reckoned to be a twentieth part in comparison with the lands of
the cburch which I am now deemed to possess as owner': but
Augustine was the son of a poor decurion of a small town, and his
see of Hippo was a considerable city. Alexandria must have been
a very wealthy see by the 43os, for Cyril was able to lay out 1,5oo lb.
gold in presents to the court, and soon after to spend another
r,ooo lb. gold (not to speak of valuable gifts in kind) for the same
purpose: it is true that his archdeacon declared that the church of
Alexandria was as a result stripped bare and in debt, but it seems
to have recovered from the strain without difficulty. At the begin-
ning of the seventh century John the Almoner on assuming office
found 8,ooo lb. gold in the patriarchal palace.
82
In 546 Justinian fixed the consecration fees of bishops on a
sliding scale according to their incomes. He placed the five
patriarchates in a class by themselves. Below them came sees
worth over 30 lb. gold per annum, then those from 30 to ro lb.,
from ro to 5, from 5 to 3, from 3 to 2, and under 2. These figures
fairly certainiy represent not the total incomes of the sees, but
episcopal stipends. We know from a decision given by Pope Felix IV
(5 26-530) that one-quarter of the revenue of the see of Ravenna
amounted to 3 ,ooo solidi, over 40 lb. gold. The bishopric of
Ravenna thus fell, as one would expect, comfortably within
Justinian's first class; for Ravenna was not only a metropolitan
see, but probably richer than most, having been the seat of the
court, and having thus attracted substantial benefactions from the
crown and great personages in governmental circles. We also
know that at Anastasiopolis of Galatia I the bishop's stipend in
the sixth century was 365 solidi, or just over 5lb. gold. Anas-
tasiopolis was an unimportant place, formerly the chief town of a
regio and only recently promoted to city rank: its bishopric falls
appropriately about halfway down Justinian's scale. The poorest
bishop of whom we know was Musonius of Meloe, a little hill
town in Isauria. Cited before Severus of Antioch for usury, he
pleaded that he could not make ends meet otherwise; 'By God,
what do you care, you who receive the stipends of Antioch, while I
have nothing in my city, not so much as six solidi?' His plea was
THE CHURCH
apparently genuine, for he promised to amend his ways on receiving
a subsidy of I 2. solidi a year from Severus. 8
3
There were thus glaring contrasts between episcopal incomes.
Musonius got less than a private's pay in the army, but this was
probably very exceptional. Even at a second-rate town like
Anastasiopolis the bishop was substantially better paid than most
professional men: six times what the public doctor got at Antino-
opolis, five times what professors of rhetoric or grammar got at
Carthage, five times what the judicial assessor of the average
magistrate of spectabi!is grade received. His salary was in fact as
high as that which the provincial governors of Helenopontus,
Pontus Polemoniacus, Paphlagonia and Honorias had received
before Justinian's reforms. A great metropolitan like the bishop
of Ravenna drew a salary equal to the highest allocated by Justinian
to a specta_bi!is: the Augustal prefect and dux of Egypt got 40 lb.
gold for his combined offices. The two upper grades in Justinian's
scale, which would no doubt include all metropolitans, covered
the same salary range as he allotted to his proconsuls, praetors
and moderators. A side-light is thrown on the scale on which the
great bishops lived by a decision of the Council of Chalcedon.
It awarded a pension of zoo solidi a year to each of the two rival
metr?politans of Ephesus whom it had just deposed, 'by way of
subsistence and consolation'. Domnus, ex-bishop of Antioch,
got 25 o solidi in similar circumstances. 84
There were as striking differences between the lower clergy. They
were graded in orders according to ancient canonical custom.
First came priests and deacons, who as servants of the altar stood
rather in a class apart. There followed sub-deacons, and the various
minor orders, readers, acolytes, singers, exorcists, and doorkeepers.
Below_ these again cat;le such humble fry as gravediggers (jossores
or coptatae) and hospital attendants (paraba!ani). There were also
deaconesses, whose principal function was to superintend the
baptism of women. The distinction between the orders was
primarily liturgical, but they were also grades of seniority, and,
a given church, carried increasing emoluments. In one
church were by a strange anomaly better paid than
pnests, and accordingly refused promotion: Pope Gelasius advised
that the salary scales be revised 'so that, convinced by this argument
at least, they may try to seek the honour which they had avoided-
and profit'. 85
From the financial point of view the order which a cleric held
was much less imJ?ortar;t the church to which he belonged.
There was a growmg distinctiOn between the cardinales or canonici
who were on the roll of the bishop's church, and the clergy of
I
l
l
j
l
1
'

the parishes and institutions. Among the former there were
naturally great contrasts according to the wealth and importance
of their see, but in general they seem to have been better paid and
ranked higher than the latter. In sixth-century Gaul the clergy of
'the church of the city' were apparently reluctant to surrender
their places and emoluments when they were appointed to 'dioceses
or basilicas situate in any place, i.e. either in the territory or in the
city itself', and the Council of Orleans in 53 8 had to rule that it
should be within the bishop's discretion whether he allowed them
to retain any part of their emoluments derived from the church of
the city. It might even be a financial loss for a priest of a great
church to become bishop of a lesser one. Gregory, a priest of
Ravenna, was deeply aggrieved when he was in 482 forcibly
consecrated to the see of Mutina, and insisted on being compensated
by the grant for his life of a Ravennate estate worth 30 solidi a
year clear. Among the clergy not on the bishop's roll there was all
the difference in the world between the staff of a well-endowed
hospital or a martyr's shrine which attracted a great flow of offerings,
and the humble priest of a poor rural parish.
86
In the primitive church the clergy had no doubt to earn their
own livings, but by the middle of the _third century the higher
orders at any rate were deemed to be full-time workers and received
salaries adequate to maintain them. The practice varied locally.
At Rome Pope Cornelius' letter implies that all the clergy, in-
cluding the minor orders down to doorkeepers, were paid. At
Carthage Cyprian insisted that the higher clergy who served the
altar (i.e. priests and deacons) must _be and not even
as guardians or trustees under a will, seemg that they shared 1n
the emoluments of the church. The lower clergy, however, might
apparently practise trades, and receive only such supplementary
payments as they required. At Cirta at the time of t:J:.e .G.reat
Persecution some at any rate of the readers worked for thetr hvmg;
one was a schoolmaster and another a cobbler.
87
The immunity from the collatio lustra!is which Constantine
granted to clerics, and which a series of fourth and century
laws maintained, implies that many of the clergy contmued to
work at crafts or engage in trade; Basil in one of his letters states
that his clergy lived by the former and not the latter. But the
clerics concerned were mainly those of the humblest grades: laws
of 356 and 36o indeed restrict the immunity to gravediggers
(copiatae). By of the fifth clerical began
to be viewed With d1sfavour. Valentlruan Ill forbade It In 452,
and about the same time the Council of Aries did the like. But
many of the minor clergy continued to practise crafts. Severus of
cc
THE CHURCH
Antioch ruled that the subdeacons of Alexandria ad Issum
should not be required to do weekly turns of duty at the bishop's
palace, because they received no pay and had to work for their
living. Cyril of Scythopolis mentions a deacon of Jerusalem
who worked as a silversmith. This is a very exceptional case, for
priests and deacons, according to the general practice of the Eastern
Church, as set out in the Canons of the Apostles, were salaried: he
must have served a very minor parochial church. At Alexandria
in the early seventh century we hear of two clerics, one a reader,
who worked as cobblers.ss
By the fifth century at any rate it was well worth while to be a
priest or deacon on the establishment of a great see. Theodore,
an agens in rebus of twenty-two years' service, who was, as he
explained in his petition to the Council of Chalcedon, within sight
of 'the privileges of that great corps', accepted a diaconate at
Alexandria from Cyril; and from the tone of his petition it is clear
that he had no vocation. Marinus the Syrian, Anastasius' great
praetorian prefect, asked Severus of Antioch to get the metropolitan
of Apamea to ordain one of his relatives as priest; he was a poor
relation but even poor relations of so great a man as Marinus
were ~ t paupers. Severus was also asked himself to ordain a
protege of the great eunuch Eleutherius, the sace!!arius. This kind
of thing was, according to Justinian, common in the Great Church
of Constantinople and the major sees generally. Under the judg-
ment of Pope Felix IV the sixty clergy of Ravenna received 3,ooo
solidi between them, that is an average annual stipend of 5o solidi;
actually the ten priests and eleven deacons would have received
larger stipends, perhaps as much as some I oo solidi each. And
this was their income from endowments only, without taking their
share of the offerings into account.
89
By contrast the priest or deacon of a rural parish was usually
a very humble person, and often miserably paid. If his church
was on a great estate, he was normally a eo/onus and had to pay his
capitatio like the rest, and find a substitute to work his holding.
The endowment of rural parishes was often meagre: Gregory the
Great licensed the consecration of churches that had as little as
I o, 6 or even 3 solidi a year after payment of tax, and this had to
cover the lighting and repair of the church as well as support the
priest. He had of course his offerings as well-or two-thirds of
them, if as in Spain and Gaul the bishop. pocketed a third-but
they are unlikely to _have bee!l s?bstantlal. He was moreover
subject to other exact1ons by h1s btshop, who was wont to make
oppressive claims for hospitality and transport on his annual
visitation, and levied a fee called cathedraticum, which Pope

Pelagius and two Spanish councils endeavoured to limit to two
solidi.
90
An index to the growing wealth of the church is the emergence of
simony and kindred abuses. There had, of course, been isolated
cases of simony at all times. In the proceedings before Zenophilus,
consular of Numidia, in po, it was alleged that one Victor had
given twenty folies to Silvanus, the bishop of Cirta, to be ordained
priest, and that four hundred folies had been paid for the election
of Majorinus as bishop of Carthage. Nor did men always pay
money for orders because they were financially profitable. Basil
found that his rural bishops were accepting bribes for ordinations,
but the motive of the ordinands was to escape military service.
Antoninus of Ephesus was alleged to sell consecrations of bishops
at a regular tariff according to the revenues of the sees: but when
John Chrysostom held an investigation the bishops concerned
declared that they had paid for their consecration to escape their
curial obligations, and were quite content to be unfrocked when
John gave them their money back and promised to persuade the
emperor to release them from the curia. 9
1
Simony does not seem to have become a crying scandal until
the middle of the fifth century. The emperor Marcian specially
requested the Council of Chalcedon to condemn it, and it duly
enacted a canon to that effect. At about the same time in the West
the Council of Aries also issued a canon against simony. Thereafter
imperial laws and ecclesiastical canons against the abuse became
common. Bribery was common at all levels, and with it went the
use of influence and intimidation. Candidates for ordination
bribed bishops or got patrons to exercise pressure on their behalf;
candidates for bishoprics bribed or intimidated the lay and clerical
electors; candidates for the papacy bribed their electors on an
unprecedented scale.
92
Some payments became habitual and were eventually sanc-
tioned by custom. Justinian prohibited (except in the Great
Church of Constantinople) the payment of what were called
insinuativa ( lp<pavtaux6.), fees demanded by the clergy of a church
for the admission of new members, but permitted the customary
fees to the assistants of the ordaining bishop-provided that they
did not exceed one year's stipend.93
He also regulated the consecration fees of bishops ( lv6eovurnx6.).
These were an old abuse. At the Council of Chalcedon Eusebius,
metropolitan of Ancyra, though accepting the patriarchal dignity
proposed for Constantinople, pleaded: 'I beg that the cities may
not be ruined on account of consecrations, for if the persons elected
by the city are not approved by the provincial council and conse-
910 THE CHURCH
crated in the cities themselves, their property goes to ruin. I speak
from experience, paid a. great sum U:Y prede;essor.' a
priest ofConstantmople, obJected thatthtskindof thing was aboltshed
by canon, but Eusebius remained 'By G<;>d's grace
putation of the h.oly archbishop Anatoltus .ts unsulhed, but no one ts
immortal.' Justmtan allowed the five patrtarchs to pay t;ot ex-
ceeding 20 lb. gold to t.he bishops and cle:gy concerned m thetr con-
secration. Those appomted to the wealthiest sees, of an annual value
exceeding 30 lb. gold, paid xoo solidi to their and 200
solidi to his notaries and assistants, and so on down a sliding scale:
'consecrations to sees worth less than 2 lb. gold were free.
94
Candidates for bishoprics were apparently allowed reasonable
election expenses. In a case tried before Pope Gelasius a certain
Eucharistus stated that he had given Faustus, a defensor of the
church of Ravenna, 63 solidi to spend in connection with his
candidature for the see of Volaterrae. He had not been elected
and reclaimed the money, but Faustus counterclaimed that he
had spent part of the money, 22! solidi on food forag.e for
the decurions whom he had produced to support
and 9 solidi for in':estigating a .false charge (no detatls aro; gtven
of this mysterious Item). Gelastus allowed the counterclatm and
ordered Faustus to repay the balance.
95
As Christianity spread and the wealth of the church increased,
so the numbers of the clergy grew. The see of Rome already had a
staff of x 54, including 46 priests at;d seven deacons (a
which the popes cor:sidered canorucal :md exceeded), .m
the middle of the third century. But m this Rome was qmte
exceptional. At Cirta, the capital of Numidia, when on I June 302
the curator of the city cited the clergy to surrender the scriptures,
there appeared at the house where the Christians assembled,
besides the bishop, three priests, two deacons, four subdeacons,
and half a dozen gravediggers; the curator later visited the houses
of seven readers, who had failed to present themselves. There
were thus a total of sixteen, not counting the gravediggers.
Constantine in 3 26, alarmed by the flood of decurions who took
orders in order to escape their curial duties, endeavoured to fix
the numbers of the clergy, ordering that none should be ordained
save wfill a vacancy caused by death, but this law, if ever enforced,
inevitably became a dead letter. No further restrictions were
imposed until the Council of Chalcedon enacted that clergy should
only be ordained to a particular church.
96

THE LOWER CLERGY 9II
In 5 I 8 a petition against Peter, metropolitan of Apamea in
Syria, by the staff of the episcopal church, was signed by I 7 priests,
over 42 deacons, 3 subdeacons and I 5 readers; they thus numbered
about So. The judgment of Pope Felix IV on the revenues of the
metropolitan see of Ravenna was signed by 6o persons, including
ten priests, eleven deacons, five subdeacons, twelve acolytes,
twelve readers and four singers. The patriarchal churches naturally
had larger staffs. Justinian ordered that the establishment of the
Great Church of Constantinople should be reduced to 6o priests,
xoo deacons, 90 subdeacons, no readers, 2 5 singers and xoo
doorkeepers-48 5 persons in all-besides 40 deaconesses; and
they served only four of the many churches of the capital.
97
To these must be added gravediggers and hospital attendants.
The latter, the paraba!ani, were at Alexandria reduced to 500 in 416,
only to be increased to 6oo two years later. At Constantinople
there was a body of 950 decani, who under a scheme laid down by
Constantine provided free burials for the whole city. He gave
immunity from taxation to 9 5o shops on condition that each
provided a decanus. Anastasius added another I 50 shops, and also
an endowment of 70 lb. gold a year. Justinian reorganised the
service with minute attention to detail. Of the I, 100 shops Soo
were to provide a man each, the other 300 to pay a cash commuta-
tion. This money, together with Anastasius' endowment (which
had apparently dwindled), was to furnish pay not only for the 8oo
decani (182 solidi a month) but for female mourners drawn from
various sources (218 solidi a month). The standard funeral was
free, but those who wanted more numerous mourners or specially
splendid biers had to pay extra. 98
Many of these clerics were engaged on administrative duties.
From the time of the Council of Chalcedon one of the priests in
every episcopal church in the East served as general manager of
the finances. The popes employed members of their clergy as
regional agents in charge of the church lands. There were also
sacrists in charge of the church treasures and plate, and keepers of
the archives. The charitable activities of the see were conducted
by managers of its hospitals, almshouses and hostels. In any
episcopal church of any importance there were moreover bodies
of notaries, who kept its records, and of defensores (iiubtuot), who
guarded its legal interests and served as clerical policemen. These
were recruited from the clergy, holding the grades of lector, sub-
deacon, deacon, and priest as they rose in seniority from the bottom
of the list to primicerius notariorum or defensorum.
99
These figures refer to the staffs of episcopal churches only, and
do not take into account the numerous clergy who served in
THE CHURCH
independent charitable institutions, and in urban and rural parochial
churches. We have only two figures. When Ibas, bishop of
Edessa, told the Council of Chalcedon that his clergy numbered
2oo or more, he was probably referring to the total number in his
city or see; the staff of the episcopal church of Edessa at this
date comprised 14 priests, 37 deacons, 23 subdeacons and one
reader. All the clergy of the church of Carthage, according to
Victor Vitensis, numbered 5 oo or more, including boy readers:
the cathedral church is unlikely to have had a larger staff than the
Great Church of Constantinople, and the figure no doubt
represents the total of the clergy in the city.1oo
The clergy enjoyed a number of fiscal and other privileges,
mostly granted to them by Constantine or Constantius II. They,
or the poorest and humblest grades among them, were, as we have
seen, immune from the collatio !ustra!is. They were also exempted
with their families and households from the capitatio; this privilege
was later restricted as the numbers of the rural clergy grew, and
each church was allowed only a fixed number of immune places,
so that clergy in excess of the quota had to pay poll tax. The clergy
were also exempt from billeting and corvees. These privileges
mainly affected the humbler sort of clerics. Those who owned land
had no immunities; despite representations by the council of
Ariminum Constantius II refused to remit either the regular tax or
additional levies. The privilege which affected upper-class clergy
was immunity from the curia, a concession which caused endless
conflicts between the government and the church.1o1
It remains to consider how the clergy were appointed and from
what classes they were drawn. It was the prerogative of the bishop
-except in so far as he delegated his functions to rural bishops-
to make all ordinations in his territory. It was also an old rule,
affirmed by the Councils of Aries and Nicaea and constantly re-
enacted, that clergy might not migrate from the city in which they
were first ordained. In theory therefore a bishop had complete
over the appointment and promotion of all clerics in
his territory, and conversely all clerics were entirely dependent
for their advancement on their bishop: in point of fact the rule
against migration was laxly enforced, as its frequent repetition
shows.
102
It was no doubt always the normal rule that a man should take
minor orders first, and move up by regular stages to the priesthood.
This was certainly the ideal inculcated by the popes in the late
fourth and fifth centuries. Siricius ruled that an ordinand must
be reader or exorcist for two years and subdeacon for five before
going on to the diaconate and that deacons must not be ordained

THE LOWER 913
before thirty or priests before thirty-five. Zosimus stiffened these
rules; an ordinand must serve five years as reader, then four as
subdeacon and five as deacon before reaching the priesthood.
Zosimus had, however, to admit that this strict order of promotion
was little observed in Gaul or Spain, or even in Africa, where
discipline was better enforced.l03
The rules seem excessively rigid, and would have made the
church too like the civil service-which Zosimus cites as a model.
They were naturally cherished by the mass of the clergy, who
resented persons who possessed influence or were favourites of
the bishop being ordained or promoted out of turn. When Peter
of Apamea ordained a layman straight to the diaconate, his readers
raised a protest and so annoyed the bishop that he blasphemously
declared: 'if you do not keep quiet, I will ordain you subdeacons,
so that if the Crucified himself came down he could not rescue
you from my hands'-the significance of the threat is obscure:
perhaps subdeacons at Apamea were, as at Alexandria ad Issum,
unpaid and overworked.l04
Irregular promotions were, however, not uncommon: Cyril
of Alexandria made the agens in rebus who was deputed to serve
him at the Council of Ephesus a deacon. They might be forced on
a bishop by external pressure. Pope Felix IV had to warn the
clergy of Ravenna that laymen, including monks, must not seek
the patronage of great men to obtain orders to which they were
not entitled, thus making their bishop appear unfair if he complied
or ungracious if he did not. As we have seen Severus of Antioch
had great difficulty in refusing a priesthood to a candidate recom-
mended to him by the sace!!arius, and wrote a piteous letter to one
of the other imperial eunuchs, begging him to placate the great
man: but he himself backed the candidature of another layman,
recommended by Marinus, the praetorian prefect, for a priesthood
at Apamea.1os
Apart from such external pressure and the claims of seniority a
bishop had a free hand in appointing and promoting his own
clergy, the cardina!es or canonici. In the separately endowed churches
he had to consider the wishes of the founder and, when the church
was on an estate, those of the landowner, whether he had built
the church himself or not. An imperial law of 398 enacted that in a
church on an estate only a eo/onus of that estate might be ordained,
and another of 409 made the ordination of a eo/onus even on his
own estate subject to the landlord's consent. The Council of
Arausio in 441 dealt with the rather delicate case when a bishop
founded a church, perhaps on an estate of his own, in another
bishop's territory. It ruled that the bishop in whose territory the
THE CHURCH
church lay must have control, but he ought to ordain such candi-
dates as the founder bishop presented to hiin, and accept any
already ordained clergy that the founder wished to institute.
Justinian enacted that the founder of a church or its patron, '?'ho
provided its revenue, was not at liberty to present anyone he liked
to the bishop to be ordained without question; the bishop w ~ to
examine candidates and reject the unworthy. The Counctl of
Orleans in 541 forbade the owners of estates to employ
clergy from elsewhere in their churches without the bishop's
consent.
106
Ordinands might be of any age, from infants to men of advanced
years. Most candidates were no doubt young men, but some took
orders after having completed a secular career, like the retired
memorialis Euthalius who became a priest at Cyrrhus, and it was
not uncommon for parents to dedicate their children in infancy to
the church. Siricius and Zosimus made special rules for those
who had entered orders in infancy; they were not to be promoted
above the grade of reader under twenty however long their
service. An interesting example of the variety which prevailed in
the age of ordination is provided by the Council of Mopsuestia
in 5 5o. Of fi.fteen aged priests and deacons of that city five had
received their first orders at thirty or over (two at thirty-seven or
eight), four between fi.fteen and twenty-four and no fewer than
six at ten or under (some at five or six).l07
Most candidates for orders were volunteers, but by no means all.
There are innumerable stories of holy men, monks or hermits,
who despite their protests of unworthiness were more or less
forcibly ordained by strongminded bishops, usually supported
and even pressed on by popular clamour. In other cases compulsion
was applied for less worthy motives. There was an embarrassing
incident at Hippo when the enormously rich young senator
Pinianus came to visit Augustine. The people of Hippo, thinking
that he would be a desirable catch owing to his wealth and
generosity, clamoured that he be ordained priest forthwith, and the
demeanour of the congregation was so threatening that Augustine
was almost forced to comply, and only managed to rescue the
terrified and unwilling young man by making him swear in public
never to accept ordination. in any other city. The emperor
Majorian found it necessary to legislate against forcible ordinations,
allowing the victims to divest themselves of their orders and recover
10 lb. gold as damages from the archdeacon of the church con-
cerned. He states that parents often encouraged such practices in
order to get rid of sons whom they disliked and wished to cut out
of their inheritance.tos

EPISCOPAL ELECTIONS
By a canon first promulgated by the Council of Nicaea and re-
enacted by a number of later councils, a bishop might not leave the
see to which he had been consecrated and move on to another.
This rule seems to have been fairly well observed; Socrates could
only collect a dozen cases of translation in all the Eastern empire
over a period of two generations. It was aimed against ambitious
careerists, but its strict observance worked hardly for men who
like Gregory Nazianzen had been consecrated unwillingly to
petty sees which gave no scope for their abilities. It also prevented
any promotion from ordinary to metropolitan or patriarchal sees,
and meant that men of tried ability and experience were excluded
from the most responsible positions in the church.
1
0
9
Bishops stood in a class apart from the ordinary clergy. They
were not necessarily chosen from among the clergy of the city-
the canon against the migration of clerics to cities other than their
own did not apply when the choice of a bishop was being made-
and even laymen might be elected. Hosius elicited a canon from
the Council of Sardica that a layman must serve as reader, deacon
and priest before he became a bishop. This became regular papal
policy: Leo directed that in Illyricum metropolitans should
be chosen from the priests and deacons of the metropolitical
church. Eventually Justinian made an imperial law that only bona
fide clerics of at least six months' standing might become bishops;
the rule was not to be evaded by bestowing the minor orders on
the candidate a day or two before his consecration.
110
This rule was naturally favoured by the clergy, who disliked
having an outsider put in over their heads, but the people often
thought otherwise. What they wanted was either a really holy
man, a monk or hermit, whose intercessions on their behalf would
be likely to be effective with the powers above-and such holy
men were often not in orders--or a man of position and influence,
whose intercessions to the imperial government would be effective.
As the people of Hydrax and Palaebisca explained to Synesius,
Orion the bishop of Erythrum (under whom they had been) had
been 'very mild', and so they had cltosen a bishop of their own,
Siderius, 'who had come down from the court of the emperor
Valens on business connected with the care of lands for which he
had petitioned-a man who could do harm to his enemies and good
to his friends' .m
The popular will often prevailed, and the order laid down by
the popes was regularly broken. There are countless instances of
THE CHURCH
monks and hermits being, often much against their will, forced
to become bishops. Some were a great success: others, like the
unhappy Theodore of Syceon, who ultimately got leave to retire,
were quite incapable of handling the administrative work which
a bishop had to perform. Ordinary laymen also continued to be
consecrated down to the sixth century.nz
Bishops, like the lower clergy, were on occasion consecrated
against their will. Sometimes it was the people of the city who
insisted on imposing their will, as in the famous case of Ambrose.
Sometimes it was the imperial government which wanted to
relegate a powerful subject to a position where he could do no
harm; Cyrus, once praetorian prefect of the East and prefect of
Constantinople, was made bishop of Cotyaeum when he fell from
power. Sometimes it was a strong-minded metropolitan who
applied pressure and not always for worthy motives. Bassianus
was a wealthy Ephesian who had endeared himself to the people
by his charity-he had founded a hospital with seventy beds.
According to his own story, which he told to the Council of
Chalcedon, Memnon, the bishop of Ephesus, was jealous of him
and, wishing to get rid of him, despite his protests consecrated him
bishop of the miserable little city of Euaza by violence-'from
the third hour to the sixth he exhausted me with blows at the altar,
and the holy gospel and the altar were covered with blood'.
Bassianus, it may be suspected, had higher ambitions than Euaza;
his subsequent career will be told later. The church had no
sympathy for bishops who refused to go to the sees to which they
were consecrated: the Council of Antioch ordered them to be
excommunicated. Ha
Sometimes an aged bishop arranged for his successor to be
consecrated during his lifetime: Augustine was made bishop of
Hippo in this way by his predecessor Valerian. But the practice
was considered irregular and was condemned by a Roman council
in 465. The normal procedure was for the clergy and people on
the one hand, and the metropolitan and other bishops of the pro-
vince on the other, to agree on a candidate: when the see was itself
a metropolis it was apparently in early times the other bishops of
the province who represented the episcopal side; later (in the East)
the patriarch's consent was required. The role played by the clergy
and people in the proceedings varied greatly according to cir-
cumstances. Sometimes they had no ideas of their own and
accepted a candidate chosen by the metropolitan or the bishops,
or even asked him or them to find a suitable man. When bishop
Aeneas died the little Christian community of Gaza could not
choose a successor; there were a number of suitable candidates

EPISCOPAL RLECTIONS
both among the clergy and the laity, but none commanded a
majority. So they resolved to send a delegation to their metro-
politan, John ofCaesarea, to ask him to choose, and he picked on
an outsider, Porphyry.U4
Frequently, and especially in times of acute doctrinal controversy,
the bishops took a high hand and consecrated someone of their
party in defiance of the wishes of his future flock. This abuse
appeared very early. The Council of Ancyra, held before Nicaea,
had to deal with cases of bishops whom, though duly consecrated,
their cities had refused to receive, and so also had the Council of
Antioch, held soon after Nicaea. These homeless bishops were
rather a nuisance, being liable to make trouble with the bishops of
their native towns, or to take over sees which fell vacant without
the leave of their metropolitan and colleagues. The imposition
of bishops on unwilling cities was often effected by force, with the
aid of troops supplied by the imperial government; after Chalcedon
very few orthodox patriarchs of Alexandria took possession of
their sees otherwise. Apart from these notorious cases, there was
a tendency in the fifth and sixth centuries for patriarchs and metro-
politans to ride roughshod over the rights of the cities. Leo had
to rebuke the metropolitan of Achaea for doing so, and Sisinnius of
Constantinople consecrated Proclus bishop of Cyzicus, only to
find that the Cyzicenes had chosen another man.115
Usually, however, the people of the city had some say in the
election of their bishop. Occasionally they took matters into their
own hands by demonstrating with such fervour for the man of
their choice that the bishops had to agree. Ambrose and Martin
were thus chosen by popular acclamation, and while the former
was acceptable to his future colleagues, the latter was not. 'He is a
contemptible person,' they objected, 'unworthy of the episcopacy,
a man of despicable appearance with dirty clothes and unkempt
hair' ; but they had to consecrate him.
116
For a popular candidate to be installed only one bishop was
absolutely necessary and one could generally be cajoled or bullied
into acting. The story of Bassianus' election to the see of Ephesus
was thus told to the Council of Chalcedon by his consecrator,
Olympius of Theodosiopolis. 'The clergy of the city of Ephesus
itself notified me. "Come to Ephesus," they said, "so that the city
can receive a consecration canonically, because the late bishop
Basil of holy memory has passed away." When I received this
letter, I went, supposing that other reverend bishops had been
summoned too. Three days before he was due to enter the church
and be enthroned I put up at an hotel and waited for the other
bishops, so that there should be a canonical consecration according
THE CHURCH
to custom. I waited one, two, three days at my hotel and no other
reverend bishop appeared, and finally some of the reverend clergy
came and said to me: "There are not any other bishops here.
What's to be done?" "If there are not other reverend bishops
here," I replied, "what can I do alone? It is contrary to a stnct
observance of the canons for one bishop to deal with a church,
especially such an important metropolis." While they were talking
with me, the building where I was staying was surrounded by an
enormous crowd and one Holosericus-that was his name, an
official of the comes, I think--came in with dagger drawn and he
and all the crowd carried me off to the church.'117
Popular elections were not always uncontested, and might lead
to sanguinary rioting. Ammianus describes the contest between
Damasus and Ursinus for the papal throne; after one brawl in the
basilica of Sicininus one hundred and thirty-seven corpses were
removed. We possess official correspondence between the imperial
government and the prefects of the city about the later contest
between Boniface and Eulalius; it vividly illustrates the prefect's
difficulties in maintaining order in the face of popular passions,lls
Such tumultuous whether contested or uncontested,
were somewhat excepttonal. More usually there was an orderly
debate. The electoral body is usually described as clerus et plebs,
but neither body is clearly defined. Clerus probably in practice
normally meant the priests and deacons of the central episcopal
establishment, but at one election Pope Gelasius ordered that the
priests and deacons from all the parishes should be convened.
Plebs might in a small community mean the whole body of the
laity. Synesius speaks of the unanimous vote of the whole people
at the village see of Olbia, and at another village see, that of
Hydrax and Palaebisca, describes how he summoned a mass
meeting at which women were present. But in the middle of the
fifth century the formula changes to c!erus ordo et plebs or c!erus
honorati ordo et plebs, and it may be suspected that the common
people were in most cities given little opportunity to do more
than acclaim a candidate chosen by their betters: the mid fourth-
century canons of Laodicea even ordained that 'the mob should
not be allowed to make the choice of those to be appointed bishops'.
The lay electors were in fact the members of the city council, and
the local who to the imperial aristocracy.n9
If the election was unanimous and the candidate acceptable to
the consecrators, all went well. If on the other hand either of these
conditions was not fulfilled, a deadlock might ensue, and no regular
procedure 'Yas at fi;st down for with such cases.
Pope Leo directed his VIcar at Thessalomca that the metropolitan

EPISCOPAL ELECTIONS
of the province should choose the worthier candidate in case of a
disputed election. Sidonius Apollinaris tells of two episcopal
elections which he witnessed. At Cabillonum there were three
candidates, none of them very desirable, a nobleman of dissolute
life, a man who based his hopes on his lavish treating of the
electorate, and a third who had promised grants of church lands
to his backers. The metropolitan rejected all three, and persuaded
the meeting to adopt the local archdeacon. At Bituriges there were
so many candidates that two benches barely accommodated them,
and opinion was quite divided: once again the presiding bishop-
in this case Sidonius himself-put forward a man of his own
choice.
120
The mid fifth-century Council of Arles had before this date
laid down a procedure for avoiding such difficulties: the bishops
were to select three candidates from whom the people were to
make their choice. This canon had evidently already become a
dead letter, if it was ever observed. In the West no machinery for
avoiding disputed elections was in fact ever evolved. In the East
the rule was adopted that the clergy, decurions and notables of
the city should nominate three candidates, from whom the metro-
politan should choose one. This rule was apparently laid down
by ecclesiastical authority and confirmed by an imperial law under
Anastasius; Severus of Antioch alludes to it as a novel procedure.
It was re-enacted by Justinian in 5 zS,l2l
Bishops of important sees are known to have notified the emperor
of their consecration. When there was any doubt about the validity
of an election, it obviously strengthened one's case to be acknow-
ledged by the emperor, and this was probably often the motive.
Athanasius, over whose election some doubts were-later, at any
rate-raised, wrote promptly to Constantine. Bassianus evidently
lost no time in informing Theodosius II of his election at Ephesus,
and at the Council of Chalcedon explained that the emperor had
accepted it. 'When our most pious emperor heard the news
he forthwith confirmed the action taken and forthwith issued a
memorandum publicly confirming the bishopric. Afterwards he
again sent an imperial letter by Eusebius the silentiary confirming
the bishopric.'
122
There is, however, no sign that official imperial confirmation
was required, still less anything in the nature of a conge d' elire.
It is indeed remarkable how little the imperial government inter-
fered in episcopal elections. Constantine, it is true, when the
see of Antioch fell vacant soon after Nicaea, appointed two of his
comites to supervise the council of bishops which met to make the
election, and when the candidate elected, Eusebius of Caesarea,
920 THE CHURCH
refused the honour, suggested two names to them. But this action
did not become a precedent. The emperors, of course, in periods
of controversy, often lent their aid-including the use of troops-
to the party which they were at the time backing, but they seem
to have left the choice of the bishops whom they should thus
assist in occupying their sees to the appropriate ecclesiastical
authorities.123
The one exception was the see of Constantinople. Theodosius I
ordered the bishops assembled for the Council of Constantinople
to submit to him a list of suitable candidates from which he could
choose: he chose the last name on the list, Nectarius. His successor,
John Chrysostom, was picked by Eutropius, Arcadius' chief
eunuch, and Nestorius was the choice of Theodosius II. But even
in the capital free elections were sometimes allowed. Socrates
describes the debates which preceded the election of Sisinnius in
426-he was the people's favourite. Mter Nestorius' deposition
the disputes before Maximian's election were so long drawn out
that when he died three years later the emperor served a mandate
to the bishops to consecrate his runner-up Proclus. In 449 Theo-
dosius II at first ordered the clergy of Constantinople to produce
a list of suitable candidates, reserving the final choice for himself,
but later allowed the clergy to choose. Thereafter the emperors
probably in effect nominated the patriarchs of their capital. The
monks of Constantinople said that Menas was elected 'by the
choice and vote of our most pious emperors and of the devout
clergy of his most holy church and of Christ-loving men in various
ranks and offices of state and of ourselves and all orthodox
Christians'. Pope Agapetus, who consecrated him, said more
accurately: 'If the choice of the most serene emperors smiled upon
him above the rest, yet such was the approval of all the clergy
and people that he may be believed to have been chosen by every-
one.'124
In so far as the emperors did intervene in episcopal elections it
was either to secure zealous pastors for their capital or to promote
the doctrinal views which they thought to be true. It was left
for the Merovingian kings to treat bishoprics as pieces of patronage,
and to issue precepts to their bishops to select their ministers and
favourites.
125
The clergy were drawn from almost every class of society.
Slaves were excluded from holy orders; they had to be manumitted
by their masters before they could be ordained. This was the rule
THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF THE CLERGY 92I
both of the state and of the church. The ordination of slaves was
prohibited by Arcadius in 398, by Valentiuian III in 452, and by
Zeno in 484. J ustiuian relaxed the rule, allowing slaves to be
ordained with their owner's consent; they reverted to him if they
abandoned the church. He also ruled that if a slave were ordained
without his master's knowledge, he could only be reclaimed
within a year.l
2
6
On the clerical side Pope Leo took a very Roman view on the
question. 'Persons whom the merit neither of their birth nor of
their character recommends are being freely admitted to holy
orders, and those who have not been able to obtain their freedom
from their owners are raised to the dignity of the priesthood, as if
servile vileness could lawfully receive this honour .... There is a
double wrong in this matter, that the sacred ministry is polluted
by such vile company, and the rights of owners are violated, in so
far as an audacious and illicit usurpation is involved.' In the sixth
century the first Council of Orleans in 5 I I ordered that a bishop
who ordained a slave without his master's consent should make
twofold restitution, and the ban was repeated by the third Council
of Orleans in 53 8, and extended by the fifth in 54 5 to freedmen,
for whose ordination their patron's consent was required.l27
Similar restrictions were placed on the ordination of coloni ad-
scripticii or originales in the fifth century. In 409 the imperial
government in the East forbade coloni to be ordained without
their landlord's consent, even to serve on the estate to which they
were attached. The laws of Valentinian III and Zeno applied to
coloni as well as slaves. Justinian again was more liberal, allowing
adscripticii to be ordained even without their landlord's leave,
provided that they served on the estate and did their agricultural
work. The church again agreed. Pope Leo ruled that originales
must not be ordained unless their landlords requested it or at
least agreed to it. Pope Gelasius repeated the ban, and so did the
third Council of Orleans, citing the authority of the Holy See.12s
For both slaves and coloni who were ordained despite the law
V alentiuian III laid down rules governing their owner's or land-
lord's right of recovery. If they had become priests or bishops
they could not be reclaimed, and deacons could redeem themselves
by surrendering their peculium and providing a substitute. Those in
minor orders were restored to their masters, unless covered by
the rule of thirty years' prescription. The correspondence of Pope
Gelasius reveals him enforcing these rules at the instance of indig-
nant owners or landlords.129
How many slaves or coloni actually took orders with or without
their masters' consent we have no means of telling, but probably
. THE CHURCH
the majority of the rural clergy on the great estates were drawn
from their servile or ascript population. We do not know of any
who rose to high office in the church. Justinian enacted that the
tenure of the episcopate extinguished servile or ascript condition,
but whether this law had more than a theoretical application we
do not know.l
30
In the East there was never any ban on the free working popula-
tion of the towns. The humblest grades of the clergy, the grave-
diggers and hospital attendants, were recruited from them, and so
too no doubt were many of those in minor orders who continued
working at their trades. In the West the bakers of Rome were
forbidden to take orders in 365, and all members of the Roman
guilds in 44 5. The ban was extended in 4 52 to the collegiati of other
cities; Majorian re-enacted the second law. We know of only one
individual case of a small trader who took orders, and he does
not appear in a favourable light; A! bin us in his old profession had
bought the plate of a parish church in the territory of Spoletium
for a few solidi, and though now in orders refused to part with it
though offered a refund of the price.
131
Very few soldiers or veterans seem to have taken orders. Only
two are known to fame. Victricius, who became bishop of Roto-
magus in 386, had served in the ranks, only securing his premature
discharge with great difficulty from the authorities. Martin, bishop
of Tours, had also served as a private in the guards, but he is hardly
a typical case, for he had from boyhood resolved to lead a holy life,
and was put into the army by his father, an officer, with the object
of knocking such nonsense out of him. Otherwise we hear only of
those who took orders, usually in the humblest grades of the clergy,
to avoid conscription. Basil reproved his rural bishops for
ordaining such men for money, and a law addressed to Stilicho
alludes to sons of veterans or others liable to service who en-
deavoured to evade it, or, having been conscripted, to secure
their discharge, by becoming clerics or gravediggers.132
Some persons of very humble origin certainly rose in the church.
The Council of Carthage in 42I passed a canon claiming for the
church the lands acquired by men who when they were ordained
had owned nothing, and had risen to be priests and even bishops.
But individual cases are hard to find. The most striking is that of
Aetius. He was the son of a provincial official who misconducted
himself and had his property confiscated. Left a penniless orphan
with his widowed mother to support, Aetius first worked as a
goldsmith, at the same time taking lessons in philosophy. On his
mother's death he was able to abandon his trade, and by his brilliance
in debate attracted the attention of a professor who in return for
THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF .THE CLERGY
domestic service gave him a literary education. Eventually his
master became jealous of him and turned him out. For the next
few years he led a wandering life, patronised from time to time by
various clergy and later practising as a doctor. Eventually one of
his clerical patrons became bishop of Antioch and ordained him
deacon. He ended his life as a bishop.133
To turn to the opposite end of the social scale, senators and other
bonorati do not often seem to have taken orders, and if they did
usually became bishops straight away: the case of Paulinus, a
wealthy Gallic senator who abandoned his career and s,old his
estates to pursue a religious life and only became bishop of Nola
many years later, is exceptional. It caused a sensation when
Ambrose, son of a praetorian prefect and himself consular of
Aemilia, was chosen bishop of Milan. A few years later it occa-
sioned surprise when Nectarius, a senator of Constantinople, was,
though a layman, put on the short list for the bishopric of Cone
stantinople, and was selected by Theodosius I: his brother Arsacius
later occupied the same see.
1
34
As the senatorial order expanded and took in men of humbler
station, and as the wealth and social position of bishops increased, it
no doubt became commoner for senators to condescend to be conse-
crated. Pope Siricius regarded as an abuse the consecration of those
'who have once gloried in wearing the belt of a secular office' or
'have exulted in secular pomp or have chosen to serve in affairs of
state and undertaken the care of worldly matters'. Pope Innocent
specifically forbade the ordination or consecration of those who had
held administrationes. A century later Caesarius of Aries asked Pope
Symmachus to renew the ban against former provincial governors.
The known instances of such men becoming bishops are not very
numerous even in the fifth and sixth centuries. In Gaul Germanus
was elected to the see of Autissiodurum by acclamation after having
served as provincial governor, and Sidonius Apollinaris, an
ex-prefect of the city, was chosen bishop of the Civitas Arver-
norum. In the East Chrysanthus, a former vicar of Britain, was
made the Novatian bishop of Constantinople, and Thalassius, a
former praetorian prefect of Illyricum who was expected to be
promoted to the prefecture of the East, was consecrated bishop
of Caesarea by Proclus. In the sixth century Ephraem, comes
Orientis, was elected patriarch of Antioch. These cases all excited
comment, and it is to be inferred that it always remained un-
usual for senators to take orders, even to occupy the great
sees.
135
The great majority of the higher clergy, the urban deacons and
priests and the bishops, were drawn from the middle classes,
DD
924 THE CHURCH
professional men, officials, and above all curiales. This was only
natural. For these grades a fairly high standard of education was
desirable, and literacy essential-the latter ideal seems to have been
generally achieved, for we never find a bishop, or the priest or
deacon who deputised for him at a council, who could not write
his subscription, though some from Mesopotamia could do so
only in Syriac. This qualification ruled out most of the lower
classes. On the other hand the higher branches of the clerical
career offered social and financial advantages which, if negligible
to a senator, were attractive to a man of the middle classes.
We hear of few doctors or professors who took orders except
for Aetius and Augustine, both somewhat exceptional cases.
We know of only one military officer: Mamertinus, the tribune at
Favianae in Raetia, whom Severinus inspired into military activity
against the barbarian raiders, later became a bishop, presumably
when his unit melted away and the province was abandoned.
Lawyers on the other hand are frequently mentioned. The Council of
Sardica ruled that if a rich man or a practising barrister were thought
worthy of a bishopric, he should first serve as reader, deacon and
priest for a reasonable time. Pope Innocent's high principles
excluded them. 'How many have we learned have been summoned
to the episcopacy from those who after receiving the grace of
baptism have occupied themselves with practice at the bar and have
obstinately persisted in this course?' he wrote to the bishops of
Spain. 'Rufinus and Gregory are said to be of that number.' He
banned the ordination of those who had after baptism conducted
cases in the courts, but his was a lone voice. Apart from Ambrose
and Germanus, who had both practised at the bar before obtaining
provincial governorships, Augustine's friend Alypius had been
three times assessor before he became bishop of Tagaste. Severus
of Antioch read for the bar, but did not actually practise; but his
biographer Zacharias, bishop of Mitylene, had been a lawyer;
and Severus speaks of four lawyers whom he ordained.l36
Officials met with the disapproval of several popes and councils.
Siricius forbade the ordination of anyone who after baptism
had held an official post. The Council of Toledo in 401 ruled that
anyone who had served after baptism and worn the cloak and
belt of the official, even if he had committed no grave sins, should
if admitted to the clergy be excluded from the diaconate or higher
orders. Pope Innocent protested to the Spanish bishops against
the consecration of officials 'who in obedience to the authorities
have perforce executed cruel judgments'. Caesarius of Aries asked
Pope Symmachus to forbid the ordination of those who had served
in provincial offices.l37
THE SOCIAL ORIGINS 01;' THE CLERGY 925
The state was also concerned in this matter. There was probably
little objection to higher grade officials taking orders; they were
expressly all<;>wed to do so by a law of 466 after completing their
term of serv1ce. We have already met two palatine civil servants
who took orders at or near the end of their careers, Euthalius the
ex-memorialis who became a priest at Cyrrhus, and Theodore, the
agens in rebus, who after over twenty years' service (which entitled
him to retire with an honorary principate) was ordained deacon
of Alexandria.
1
3B
With cohortales, whose service was followed by the financial
charge of the primipilate and who were bound to their position by
a hereditary tie, the government was more severe. By a law of 3 6 I
they might take orders if not liable to the primipilate or similar
obligations, or owing anything to the treasury, provided that
they received the permission of their chief and colleagues; if they
failed to obtain permission, two-thirds of their property passed to
their sons or relations, or in default of them to the ojjicium. The
law of 466 altogether prohibited cohortales to take orders even
after retirement. Justinian in 53 I excluded all cohortales from the
priesthood-in 546 from the minor orders also-unless they had
in childhood entered a monastery, or, by the later law, had been
monks for at least fifteen years. He thus in effect allowed only
sons of provincial officials to be ordained, and that after they had
given clear proof of their vocation. On officials who had actually
seen service he held the same views as Pope Innocent. 'It would
be improper for a man who has been bred up in severe exactions
and the sins that-in all probability-ensue to be at one moment
a cohortalis and do the harshest things and then be straight away
ordained a priest and teach about loving kindness and forgive-
ness.'139
These rules were not rigidly kept; in both his laws Justinian
condoned past breaches, and we know of a cohortalis who a year
or two before the first law became a bishop: Stephen, elected to
the see of Larissa in full legal form, chosen by the metropolitan
from three candidates submitted by the clergy and people, states
in an appeal to Pope Boniface II: 'In my previous secular life I was
a provincial official; in this modest career I passed my life humbly.'
At the end of the sixth century officials who had not cleared their
accounts with the treasury were still taking holy orders, and
Maurice had to issue a law once again forbidding these attempts
to evade a reckoning .t4o
To judge by the bulk of the imperial legislation on the subject
the great majority of the clergy were drawn from the curial order.
Men of this class had from the worldiy point of view a special
926 THE CHURCH
incentive in the immunity from curial duties and charges which
Constantine in the first ardour of his conversion granted to the
clergy. This grant was never withdrawn, but the government
strove to counter its deleterious effect on the city councils either
by banning the ordination of men ?f curial family o_r of fortu:<e
up to curial standard, or alternatively by compelling a cunal
ordinand to surrender his property (or at least two-thirds of it)
to a son or other relation who would take his place on the council,
or to the council itself. Constantine himself initiated the first
policy, his son Constantius II towards the end of his reign intro-
duced the second. In 398 Arcadius tried to revive the absolute ban
on the ordination of curiales in the East, but evidently without
much success, and V alentinian III and Majorian made the same
attempt in the West in 439 and in 4 52, and again in 4 58 : these laws
were more severe on clerics in minor orders, who were to be
returned to their councils without the option, whereas bishops,
priests and deacons who slipped through the net were only com-
pelled to surrender their property or perform their curial duties
by deputy. Finally Justinian banned the ordination of curia!es
unless they had, like cohortales, either entered a monastery in
childhood, or been monks for at least fifteen years.
141
The laws themselves, which at frequent intervals condoned
past breaches wholesale, especially when the offenders had reached
the higher orders, and sometimes even made provision for future
cases in which the ban should be broken, amply demonstrate that
curia!es despite all the efforts of the imperial government did take
orders in large numbers, and frequently managed to keep their
property when they did so, at least in the fourth and fifth centuries:
by the sixth century the curial order had probably become so
depleted that the flow of ordinands from it was much reduced and
its members were on the whole humble folk, who found it more
difficult to defy or evade the law.
The ecclesiastical authorities at first disliked the imperial legisla-
tion, but gradually came to acquiesce in it. Ambrose in 3 84 com-
plained bitterly that 'if a bishop seeks the privilege of laying aside
the curial burden, he has to surrender possession of all the property
of his father and grandfather', and in 3 88-9 protested to Theodosius
that 'those who have performed the office of priest or served the
church for thirty or any number of years are being dragged away
from their sacred office and assigned to the curia': it was perhaps
in deference to this protest that Theodosius in 390 allowed all
curia/os ordained in or before 388 to keep their property.l42
Pope Innocent found religious objections to the ordination of
curia/es. To the Spanish bishops he proclaimed that men 'who in
THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF THE CLERGY 927
obedience to the authorities have executed the orders given to
them' and 'have exhibited theatrical shows and games to the
people' were unworthy to be bishops. But he added: 'with regard
to curia/es we have to beware lest the same men who have been
curia/es may one day be claimed by their curiae-which we frequently
see happening'. To Victricius ofRotomagus he took the same equi-
vocal line. 'Moreover some of our brothers often try to ordain
curiales or those involved in public functions. But later they suffer
more sorrow, when some order is made by the emperor to recall
them, than they had joy in enlisting them. For it is manifest that
in the actual course of their public duties they produce theatrical
shows, which are without doubt inventions of the devil, and either
preside or are concerned in the exhibition of games.' To Felix of
Nuceria he was franker. 'About curia!es it stands to reason that,
although some are to be found of that class who ought to be
ordained, still we must beware of them because they are so often
reclaimed for the council.'143
Justinian endeavoured to justify the ban on moral grounds:
like cohortales, curia!es were unsuited by their official duties from
preaching the gospel of loving kindness. Later popes accepted the
ban on practical grounds. Gelasius in his directions to his bishops
forbade them to ordain a curialis, and so also did Gregory the Great,
'lest after receiving holy orders he may be compelled to return to
his public functions' .
144
The emperor Constans hoped that the clergy would become
a hereditary class, like soldiers, officials or shippers, their sons,
as inheriting their father's immunities, carrying on their sacred
duties. 'All the clergy ought to be free from curial burdens and all
trouble about civic duties, but their sons, if they are not held liable
to the curia, ought to persevere in the church.' This hope was not
fulfilled. There were of course great clerical families which pro-
duced bishops over several generations, and no doubt lesser
clerical families which produced a succession of priests and deacons.
But the clergy never became a caste. Most of the clerics of whom
we know either had themselves/reviously followed a lay career
or were the sons of laymen. An we know of sons of clergy who
took up a secular career, or at least were trained for it. Chrysanthus,
the son of Marcian, a Novatian bishop of Constantinople, became
consular of an Italian province and vicar of Britain. The grand-
father of Severus, bishop of Antioch, was bishop of Sozopolis,
but his father was a decurion.145
The rules of clerical celibacy or continence may have had some
effect, in areas where they were inculcated or observed, in pre-
venting the clergy from becoming a hereditary caste. It was an
928 THE CHURCH
old and universal tradition of the church that a man might not
marry after ordination to the diaconate, priesthood or episcopate.
The Council of Ancyra, shortly after the Great Persecution,
allowed deacons to marry if they stated their intention to do so on
ordination. Later the law was extended to subdeacons, and only
the minor orders, from reader downward, could marry. There
was, however, no ban against the ordination of married men or of
widowers, and, as a fair number of the clergy took orders late in
life, many of them already had children before ordination.146
On the sexual life of the married clergy there was a great
divergence of opinion. There was a school of thought which held
that they ought not to cohabit with their wives. This view was
much more strongly held in the West than in the East. Even
before the Great Persecution the Council of Illiberis in Spain
ordered all the clergy to abstain from their wives, and threatened
those who begot children with deprivation. In the East Eusebius
advocated continence for priests, but the Council of Nicaea rejected
a proposal to enforce it on the clergy, and the Council of Gangra
excommunicated laymen who refused to receive communion from
a married priest.147
In the West it was Pope Siricius (385-99) who first endeavoured
to make continence obligatory on bishops, priests and deacons
throughout the church. This policy was steadily maintained by
his successors, and Leo brought subdeacons within the ban. The
lead given by the popes was taken up by episcopal councils in
Spain. and Gaul, and .by the early fiftlt century the rule of
clencal continence was uruversally acknowledged in theory
throughout the West. Its frequent re-enactment shows that in
practice it was difficult to enforce.14s
In the East Jerome alleged that the churcltes of the Orient
(i.e. the diocese of tltat name) and Egypt, like those under the
Apostolic See, had continent clergy. At about the same date
Epiphanius of Cyprus declared that the church did not allow
bishops, deacons or even subdeacons to procreate children;
but he admitted tltat the rule was not observed in some areas.
In fact both these authors seem to have been guilty of wishful
thinking. No Eastern council enjoined on the clergy,
and the Can?ns of the Apostles, ':'hich reflect contemporary
Eastern practice, actually rule that brshops, priests and deacons
who put away their wives on the pretext of piety are to be deprived.
A bishop might, presumably with her consent, undertake to
abstain from intercourse with his wife: it was one of the charges
Antoninus of Ephesus tltat having done so he had begotten
children. In some areas pressure was brought on bishops to
MONKS AND HERMITS 929
make such undertakings: Synesius refused to do so. But according
to Socrates it was in his day, the middle of the fifth century, the
general rule in the East that even bishops might live a normal
married life, and many did beget children. The only exception
which he notes was that in Macedonia, Thessaly and Achaea the
custom had prevailed of depriving clergy who slept with their
wives. He attributes this custom to the influence of Heliodorus,
bishop of Tricca in Thessaly: it seems more likely that it was
introduced by the popes through their vicars.149
Later opinion seems to have hardened about bishops. Justinian
forbade the consecration of a man who had a wife living. But he
also forbade even a widower who had children or grandchildren
to be consecrated and his reasons were prudential. As he put it, a
bishop ought to have no other interests to distract him from his
duty to his church. Pope Pelagius, when asked to consecrate a
married man with children as bishop of Syracuse, interpreted
the intention of the law more crudely: he insisted on receiving
a bond from the candidate that he would not alienate to his family
the lands of the church, or any property he might acquire after
consecration.
150
A general history of the eremitical and monastic movements
would lie outside the scope of this book: here only their social
and economic aspects can be briefly considered. The founder of
the movement was the Egyptian Antony, who retired into the
desert in the 27os and during the Great Persecution, about 305-6,
organised the numerous disciples who had followed him into a
loosely knit community. Such groups of hermits, who lived in
separate cells and met only for common worship, were later
known as !aurae. About twenty years later another Egyptian,
Pachomius, founded the first coenobium, where the monks led a
communal life under strict discipline. Both forms of monasticism
caught on rapidiy in Egypt, and the movement soon spread to
Palestine, where the hermit Hilarion organised a /aura near Gaza
in about 330, and a few years later Epiphanius founded another
near Eleutheropolis: by the middle years of the century Cyril,
bishop of Jerusalem, spoke of 'the regiments of monks'. Rather
later, in the latter years of Constantius II, the movement spread
to Syria.
151
In Cappadocia, Armenia and Pontus the monastic life was
introduced by Eustathius of Sebaste and popularised by Basil of
Caesarea in the 35os and 36os. Further west progress was slower.
930 THE CHURCH
One Isaac came from the East to Constantinople in the last years
of Valens, and founded a monastery near the city in the early
38os, and an Armenian ex-soldier named John founded another
house in. Thrace in 3 86. But when Rufinus, praetorian prefect of
the East (392-5 ), wanted to establish a monastery at Drys in the
suburbs of Constantinople, he imported Egyptian monks. On his
death they went back to Egypt, and Hypatius, a disciple of John,
found the building deserted in 406. Hypatius however soon
collected thirty monks, and many other houses were founded
about this time.
152
Athanasius introduced the monastic idea to Gaul and Italy during
his exile in the West, but it was slow in catching on. Martin
founded the first regular monastery in the West when he became
bishop of Tours in 372, and we hear of no others in Gaul until
Honoratus established the famous house of Lerins and Cassian
two houses at Marseilles in the second decade of the fifth century.
In Italy the earliest monastic establishment of which we hear was
that which existed under Ambrose's guidance at Milan in the 38os.
Augustine seems to have been the first to introduce the monastic
life into Africa. But though it made a slow start in the West, by
the beginning of the fifth century it had taken root, and thereafter
spread rapidly.
153
These movements had an enormous vogue and many thousands
of men became hermits or monks and many thousands of women
nuns. No estimate can be made of the total at any date and many
of the figures given are no doubt exaggerations, but it may be
worth while to quote a few by way of example. The largest figures
given are for Egypt, which was not only the home of both the
eremitical and monastic movements, but remained their centre
and the model to which the rest of the empire looked. Pachomius'
original foundation is said to have grown to I,3oo or I,4oo, and
he also founded other smaller houses of 200 or 300 each. The
total inmates of the whole group are stated to have numbered 3 ,coo
before Pachomius' death in 346 and as many as 7,ooo at the begin-
ning of the fifth century. Nitria, a favourite haunt of hermits in
the desert west of the Delta, is said to have had a population of
5 ,coo, and the four !aurae of Scetis, a more remote desert settlement,
3,500 inmates. Palladius states that there were z,ooo monks in
his day at Alexandria and I ,200 in and about Antinoopolis, as well
as twelve convents of women, one of which had sixty inmates.
Rufinus declares that there were 5 ,coo monks in Oxyrhynchus,
and another 5 ,coo in its territory, as well as 2o,ooo nuns, and
Io,ooo monks in the Arsinoite; but his figures are very suspect.
We hear of some very large monastic houses, one of 8oo near the
MONKS AND HERMITS
931
Red Sea, another of 6oo at Thecoa in Palestine. John of Ephesus
mentions houses in Mesopotamia of 700 or 750, and one of nearly
I,ooo at Amida; but this was formed by amalgamating a number of
small houses. Most monasteries were smaller, but the number of
houses in a city and its territory might be very large. The signatures
to a petition from the monks of Constantinople show 85 monas-
teries in that city in ji8, and 39 across the water in Chalcedon.1s
Hermits, monks and nuns were drawn indiscriminately from all
classes of society from the highest to the lowest, and very little
attempt was made by the imperial government to restrict entry
into the monastic life. Marcian asked the Council of Chalcedon
to forbid the admission of slaves or adscripticii to monasteries
without their masters' consent. The council issued a canon banning
slaves, but took no action about ad,rcripticii. Two years later tn
the West Valentinian III prohibited both classes from becoming
monks without their masters' leave, and in 484 Zeno enacted the
.same rule in the East. Justinian ordered that all applicants of
suspect status must pass a three years' probation, and might be
reclaimed during that period by their masters. Maurice forbade
officials who had not cleared their accounts with the treasury and
common soldiers who had not received their discharge to enter
monasteries. This seemingly reasonable measure provoked Gregory
the Great to the most violent indignation.155
It was from the beginning the tradition in Egypt that hermits
and monks maintained themselves by the labour of their hands.
Many of the hermits wove rush mats, coming down periodically
from the desert to the cultivated areas to gather their raw material
and to sell their finished products; they also did seasonal agricul-
tural work. Nitria and Scetis were hives of industry, and everyone
was expected to work. The Pachomian monasteries were highly
organised industrial and agricultural concerns. The monks worked
in gangs under foremen at a great variety of trades, as smiths,
carpenters, tailors, fullers, tanners, shoemakers, basketmakers,
copyists, as well as at agricultural work. The surplus products
were sold in the market, and the money devoted to charity.m
Even in Egypt hermits and monks received much by way of
offerings in kind from the admiring faithful, and monasteries
gradually acquired endowments in land and house property by
gift and bequest. In Syria it was apparently still customary for
hermits and monks to work for their living in the late fourth
century, but by the fifth they subsisted almost entirely on charity
or on unearned income. Theodoret records as remarkable the
regime instituted by Theodosius of Antioch in his monastery near
Rhosus. He preached the gospel of work, arguing that monks
93
2 THE CHURCH
ought not to be dependent on charity when laymen not only
supported their wives and children but paid their taxes and
additional levies, and gave their firstfruits to God and alms to
beggars. His monks not only cultivated the soil, but wove baskets,
mats and sails and dressed hides: he built a little jetty to enable
shippers to put in and buy his products.
151
When Hypatius founded a monastery near Chalcedon in the
first decade of the fifth century he maintained the tradition of work.
There were not only a steward, a porter, a guestmaster, an infirma-
rian, a washerman, a man to mend the clothes, another to mind the
animals, and a calligrapher to copy books: the monks also worked
in the garden and the vineyard and wove hair fabrics, and took
weekly turns to do the housework. By the fifth century, however,
such industry was exceptional in the East. In the West it seems to
have been unknown. John Cassian regretfully contrasts the huge
monasteries of Egypt with their thousands of industrious and
disciplined monks with the houses of his native Gaul where,
because they expected to live on endowments, the monks were
few and led idle and irregular lives. An early sixth century Gallic
council even forbade abbots to alienate the community's slaves,
in case the monks should be compelled to work their land them-
selves. By this time monasteries both in the East and the West
seem normally to have been endowed, and Benedict's renewed
insistence on work as well as prayer was a very needful reform.
158
The eremitic and monastic movements were in some sense a
rebellion against the constituted authorities of the church. Monks
and hermits set out to live a more strictly Christian life than was
possible for the ordinary layman, or for that matter for the ordinary
cleric, and as holy men they sometimes thought that they knew
better than worldly bishops and were reluctant to submit to their
authority. These feelings were generally shared by the laity,
which had immense respect for their austere and ascetic lives and
reverenced their theological opinions. In doctrinal controversies
the bishops who could rally the monks had formidable armies of
shock troops at their disposal, and even the imperial government,
when it was backing a party which did not command monastic
support, found itself in grave difficulties. The emperor Valens
had to take very drastic measures against the Egyptian monks,
who demonstrated against the Arian bishops whom he favoured:
he condemned large numbers to the mines and quarries, deporting
them to distant provinces. After the Council of Chalcedon the
monks of Palestine raised a regular rebellion against Juvenal, the
bishop of Jerusalem, who had changed sides when he saw whicll
way the wind was blowing; troops had to be used to restore order
CHURCH AND STATE
933
and expel the monophysite bishops whom the monks had in-
stalled.159
Monks, even if laymen, as they commonly were, were of course
subject to normal episcopal jurisdiction and, if they were ordained,
came under the closer control of their bishop. There was, however,
a conflict of loyalties, to their abbot and to their bishop, and the
influence of the former was normally stronger. The emperor
Marcian asked the Council ofChalcedon to decree thatnooneshould
be permitted to found a monastery without episcopal licence, and
that monks should be subject to episcopal authority, and should
stay in their monasteries and not cause commotions. The assembled
bishops decreed accordingly, no doubt with hearty goodwill.
In the West the Councils of Agathe and Orleans and Carthage
enacted similar rules in the early sixth century. The third Council
of Aries, however, in 4 55 made a special concession to the famous
monastery of Lerins, that the bishop should have authority only
over priests and not over lay monks. Caesarius of Aries also
secured immunity from episcopal control for the nunnery which
he founded. Justinian legislated in great detail on monasteries.
Convents of monks and nuns were to be rigorously separated.
Monks were to eat together in a common refectory and sleep in a
common dormitory. Abbots were to be chosen not by seniority
but by merit, and the choice of the community was to be subject
to the bishop's approvaJ.Iso
Economically the church was an additional burden, which
steadily increased in weight, on the limited resources of the empire.
The huge army of clergy and monks were for the most part idle
mouths, living upon offerings, endowments and state subsidies.
This was something new. In Egypt there had been a full-time
professional priesthood of considerable numbers, but Egypt was
unique in this. Elsewhere, with a few exceptions of minor im-
portance, pagan priesthoods were part-time offices, generally unre-
munerated, held by ordinary citizens. The Egyptian temples had
possessed large endowments in land, but here again Egypt was
exceptional. Some other temples had possessed considerable es-
tates, notably that of Artemis at Ephesus and some others in Asia
Minor, but in general the sacred lands of the pagan gods were
exiguous, and served only to maintain the fabric of their shrines.
Certainly the old gods had never owned a tithe of the vast mass
of properties, great and small, whose rents went to support the
churches, charitable institutions and monasteries.
934 THE CHURCH
A proportion of these rents went to socially useful purposes.
\hrough its almshouses, orphanages, widows' homes and hos-
p1tals the churches provided for unfortunates for whom the state
did little. But it was only a quarter of the income of each see which
went to these purposes, even according to the rules laid down by
the popes, and against the specially endowed charitable institutions
must be set the far more numerous separate endowments of the
monasteries and parochial churches. A good half of the revenues
of the churches must have gone to paying the bishops and clergy,
and the sum so expended was very considerable. No exact calcula-
tions. are possible, but by the si;Xth century, if metropolitans of
provmces ;-vere, as figures cited abo-:e suggest, paid on the
of vicars of diOceses, and every City had a bishop, who
on the average the salary of a provincial governor, the
episcopate must have cost the empire far more than the administra-
tion: while, if the figures we have for the numbers of the lower
clergy are at all typical, they must have far outnumbered the civil
service. Leaving monks out of account, the staffing of the church
absorbed far more manpower than did the secular administration
and thechurcll's salary bill was far heavier than that of the empire.
The fluctuating relations between the emperors and the church
have been t.raced in the half of this book. The pre-
supposltlons on which these relations were based underwent little
cllange. Con.stantine that, as his pagan had
been responsible for mamtammg the pax deorum, so 1t was his duty
to e.nsure that the summa divinitas was not 'moved to wrath, not only
agamst the human race, but also against me myseif, to whose care he
has by his celestial will committed the government of all earthly
things'. What chiefly angered the summa divinitas was discord in
his and Constantine theref<?re had no hesitation in sup-
lt. took expert ad:'1ce, councils of
b1shops to decide on the controversies at Issue, but he himseif took
action, expelling from their sees and sending into exile recalcitrant
bishops and suppressing dissident sects. m
Son;e were less convinced of the supreme importance
of mamtammg favour, and less conscientious in enforcing
the measures requtslte for that purpose; some had hesitations as
to yrhat. beliefs pleasing to God. B?t none questioned the
baste ax1on; that VIctory over the and the!prosperity
of the emptre were dependent on God s favour, and that it was
the emperor's duty to see that he was conciliated. It remained
moreover a constant belief that uniformity in doctrine was the
prime condition of God's favour. Justinian indeed, in the belief
'that the purity and discipline of priests and their zeal towards our
935
Lord G?d Christ and the prayers which they send
up to him, g1ve great favour and mcrease to our empire, whereby
we are enabled to conquer the barbarians and gain possession of
lands which we formerly did not hold', forbade the clergy to
play dice. But the main task of the imperial government was always
to suppress heresy and schism.162
These beliefs were in principle shared by the leaders of the
cllurch. As Nestorius declared when he became bishop of Con-
stantino_Ple :. 'Give me the earth purified of heretics, your majesty,
and I will gtve you heaven in return. Subdue the heretics with me
and I will subdue the Persians with you.' That uniformity of
doctrine was desirable and that the state ought to suppress
dissidents was rarely questioned save by those who were for the
time being the victims of repression. Martin protested strongly-
and with success-against Maximus when he proposed to use
military force against the Priscillianists. Augustine at first wished
to win over the Donatists by persuasion, but he soon convinced
himseif of the necessity of penal laws against them. Socrates
expressed disapproval of Nestorius' bigotry. Procopius sympa-
thised with the victims of Justinian's penal legislation. These
seem to be the only disinterested voices raised against persecution.
The Donatists originally appealed to Constantine to settle their
quarrel with the Catholics: it was only when the verdict went
finally against them that they evolved the doctrine that the church
ought to be of the state; 'what has the emperor to do
with the church.' Athanasius, Hilary and the homoousian party
in the West enunciated a similar doctrine and put forward pleas for
relil\ious liber!f, when II was lending his support to
the!! adversanes. They had ratsed no protest when Constantine
had ejected their rivals, and they said nothing about religious
freedom when Gratian and Theodosius I banned all beliefs but
their own.tsa
CHURCH AND STATE
Pope Gelasius in reply to Anastasius' demands enunciated the
famous doctrine of the two powers: in secular affairs bishops should
obey the emperor, in sacred matters the emperors must submit to
the judgment of bishops. It is probable that in the abstract all
emperors would have subscribed to this formula: Constantius II
it is true, is alleged by Athanasius to have declared, 'what I wish
must be regarded as a canon', but if he ever made such a remark it
must have been in a moment of pique. But if the principle was
it was a question how the emperor should
ehc1t the judgment of b1shops, and how far he could go in inter-
preting it.164
Constantine first referred the Donatist issue to a hand-picked
THE CHURCH
council of bishops, but acquiesced in Miltiades' enlarging the
council. On an appeal he summoned a second council, larger
but apparently of his own choice, and on a second appeal he
judged the issue himself. The Arian controversy he referred to a
general council over which he himself presided, and the case of
Athanasius to a hand-picked council presided over by an imperial
commissioner. He himself pronounced on Athanasius' appeal
from this council. Such a technique, whereby the emperor chose the
bishops who were to make the decision, and through a lay president
guided their discussions, obviously could give the imperial govern-
ment a considerable de facto influence on ecclesiastical decisions. It
was freely used by Constantius II and by subsequent emperors.
The practical application of the formula was most difficult in
periods when the church was profoundly divided on some doctrinal
issue. In such circumstances there was no means of ascertaining
what was the judgment of the church. The claim of the popes to
define doctrine was not generally accepted, and even general
councils did not prove, as Constantine had hoped, infallible. The
Council of Ephesus in 449 and the Council of Chalcedon in 451
issued diametrically opposite verdicts, and each was held in
abhorrence by a large body of bishops. In such cases the emperors,
unless they abdicated their duty of enforcing the true faith, were
bound to take a line of their own. In such circumstances they
were naturally often swayed by their personal theological beliefs
or the opinions of bishops who had their ear, and sometimes by
political considerations-the desire to effect a compromise which
would bring peace and quiet, or to rally to their support important
bodies of malcontents.
It is clear that the formula of Nicaea was regarded as heretical
by a large body of opinion in the East. Constantius II himself
shared this view, but in reopening the question and getting the
church to work out a new formula he was fulfilling the desires of
a large and vocal group of bishops. The new formula was solemnly
ratified by the Councils of Ariminum, Seleucia and Constantinople,
which-if their verdicts had been approved by posterity-would
be reckoned as ecumenical. Valens did his imperial duty by
enforcing them; V alentinian was highly exceptional in refusing
to take sides. Theodosius I, in defiance of the verdict of Ariminum
and Seleucia, enacted that all his subjects must accept the doctrines
preached by Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria. The
Council of Constantinople subsequently confirmed his decision,
but he appears to have been guided by his personal convictions,
fortified by the advice of Acholius, bishop of Thessalonica, by
whom he had recently been baptised.
CHURCH AND STATE
937
In the troubled period which followed the Council of Chalcedon,
when ecclesiastical opinion was very evenly divided in the East,
the decision of .doctrinal disputes by imperial edict became in-
creasingly common. Basiliscus rejected Chalcedon outright, Zeno
implicitly rejected it in the Henoticon, and Anastasius maintained
the Henoticon. Justinian pronounced in favour of Chalcedon,
but implicitly corrected its decisions by condemning the Three
Chapters. In all these cases the emperors took the initiative,
declaring what they considered to be the correct view, and en-
deavouring to obtain the assent of the principal bishops afterwards;
Justinian eventually called a general council to ratify his condemna-
tion of the Three Chapters. Basiliscus and Zeno seem to have
been mainly swayed by political considerations in making their
choice. Anastasius had strong theological views of his own.
Justinian's motives seem to have been mixed: on the one hand he
firmly believed that his victories were God's reward to him for
suppressing heresy, on the other he laboured to produce a formula
which would satisfy both the West, which was to a man Chalce-
donian, and Egypt, which was as unanimously monophysite, and
being a keen amateur theologian he thought that he could himself
find a doctrine pleasing to God and to both parties.
In the judgment of the church the emperors have been praised
or blamed according as they supported or opposed the party
which was ultimately victorious. But, since they were not endowed
with the gift of prophecy, they could not foresee whether they
would be remembered as oppressors of the church, or as champions
of orthodoxy.
CHAPTER XXIII
RELIGION AND MORALS
D
ESPITE persistent discouragement paganism took. a
time to die. Constantine in the last decade of his re1gn
confiscated the treasures and endowments of the temples,
and probably banned sacrifice. Under his sons
certainly prohibited, and many temples were demolished. Wtth
the accession of Julian the hopes of the pagans r?se; to ?e
dashed by his death less than two years later. Julian s retgn d1d,
however, bear some fruit, in that pagan cult was by
his successors until in 391 Theodosius I issued first of a senes of
laws which progressively banned not only sacnfice but all pagan
ceremonies. The temples were closed and many of them demo-
lished.1
Pagan worship was never thereafter legal, but the laws were
laxly enforced and from time t<? time had to be In
407, in response to representatiOns by catholic b1sh?ps of
Mrica Honorius issued a constitution which should by this date
have heen hardly necessary, confiscating the endowments of
temples and ordering c_ult image.s to be removed altars
demolished. In 415 he reiterated this law, and extended 1t to other
dioceses. In the East the penalties against the pagan cult were
re-enacted by Theodosius II.in 423 and 435. by arcian in 451, by
Leo in 472, and by Anastasms, who even at this !ate date had to
prohibit bequests for the maintenance of pagan r1tes.
2

During the fourth ce?-tury pagans no
provided that they reframed from the exerctse of the1r cult.
Honorius debarred them from any militia or dignitas, but in 409
was forced to revoke the ban by a strongminded German general,
Generid who refused otherwise to take up the command to
which he had been appointed. Seven years later Theodosius. II
imposed the same ban on the East. In 468 Leo, by a law which
confined admission to the bar to orthodox Christians, excluded
pagans from the legal profession. Finally Justinian prohibited
them from holding chairs as professors, and subjected them to
9;8
I
I
I
!
'
\
PAGANS
939
the same legal disabilities as he imposed upon Jews and heretics-
incapacity to make wills, to receive inheritances or bequests, or to
testify in court. In 5 29 he even ordered all pagans to accept
baptism under penalty of confiscation and exile.
3
This legislation is enough to prove that there were still in the
sixth century a considerable number of pagans in the Eastern parts.
But we have other and more circumstantial evidence. Jolin of
Ephesus was appointed in 5 42 official missionary to the pagans in
the provinces of Asia, Caria, Lydia and Phrygia. He tells us that
with a staff of priests and deacons he laboured for several years,
demolishing temples, destroying altars and cutting down sacred
trees. He baptised 8o,ooo persons, and built for them 98 churches
and 12 monasteries. Even in this district, in the heart of the empire,
the cult of the heathen gods was being overtly carried on in
Justinian's reign on so wide a scale. A generation later Heliopolis
in Phoenicia was still a predominantly pagan city, where the Chris-
tians were a poor and oppressed minority. Tiberius Constantine
instituted a severe persecution there in 5 78, in the course of which
it was revealed that pagan rites were secretly celebrated in many
cities, including Antioch and Edessa; in the latter town a group of
prominent persons, including the governor of the province, were
caught red-handed holding a sacrifice to Zeus. In some places
paganism survived the Arab conquest. In 830 the people of
Carrhae, a city always notorious for its devotion to the old gods,
were threatened with massacre by the Caliph unless they abandoned
their religion for Islam or one of the tolerated faiths and only
saved themselves by professing themselves to be Sabians. To this
day the heretical sect of the Nusairi in. the mountains between the
upper Orontes and the sea profess doctrines which clearly derive
from the Neo-Platonic paganism of the later empire.
4
In the West also overt pagan cult survived into the sixth and
seventh centuries. In Italy itself Pope Gregory ordered the bishop
of Tarracina to suppress, if necessary with the aid of the local
vicecomes, the worship of sacred trees. In Sicily the bishop of
Tyndaris reported to him that he was unable to stop pagan worship
since it enjoyed the protection of the notables. In Sardinia Gregory
had to undertake a missionary campaign against the pagans, who
paid a regular douceur to the governor to turn a blind eye on their
cult. From Spain we have a tract of Martin of Bracara, written
about 575, denouncing the heathen practices of the rural popula-
tion: they seem harmiess enough, burning candles and making
offerings to trees and springs and rocks, holding feasts on pagan
festivals such as New Year's Day, and keeping Thursday, the
day of Jupiter, as a holiday instead of Sunday. A few years later
EE
940 RELIGION AND MORALS
the third Council of Toledo in 5 89 declared that 'the sacrilege of
idolatry is rooted in almost the whole of Spain and Gaul' and
ordered bishops with the aid of the civil governors to take active
steps against it. In Gaul a series of councils, in 533, 541, 567, 585
and 62 5, denounced pagan practices such as the worship of .trees
and fountains. Gallus, the uncle of Gregory of Tours, demohshed
a temple near Cologne, where offerings were still regularly made,
and Gregory spoke with a hermit who had overturned and des-
troyed an image of Diana near Trier which was still being wor-
shipped.5
Paganism was not so much a religion as a loosely-knit amalgam
of cults, myths and philosophical beliefs of varying origins and
even more varying levels of culture. A certain superficial unity
was given to it by the identification, often on very slender grounds,
of local gods and goddesses with those of the Greco-Roman
pantheon: there was some reciprocal borrow.ing of
practices, symbols and forms of representation. But Its mam
strength lay in the fact that it incorporated everywhere ancient
cults, hallowed by tradition and fortified by local loyalty. At the
same time it had something to offer to all sorts and conditions of
men. For countrymen there were rites and ceremonies to promote
fertility and to avert pests. For those who craved for communion
with the divine and an assurance of a future felicity there were
the mystery cults of Isis, Mithras or the Great Mother. To
intellectuals paganism was a somewhat misty pantheism, in which
the multifarious gods were aspects or emanations of the divine
Unity, and their myths and cults allegories and symbols of an
esoteric truth hidden from the vulgar.
The old gods made their strongest appeal to two very different
strata of society, the most aristocratic and cultivated classes on the
one hand, and the peasantry on the other. The old senatorial
families of Rome remained predominantly pagan down to the early
fifth century. Their sentiments are eloquently expressed in
Symmachus' plea for the altar of victory. In their minds the tradi-
tional religion was intimately linked with pride in the glorious
history of Rome: 'this worship made the world subject to my
laws,' pleads the ancient city to the young emperor, 'these rites
repelled Hannibal from my walls and the Gauls from the Capitol'.
For the cultured classes throughout the empire, whose minds
were steeped from childhood in the study of the ancient poets,
orators and philosophers, paganism was associated with the great
heritage of classical literature and learning which they so highly
prized. The teaching profession in particular long remained
predominantly pagan. Down to the early fifth century most of
PAGANS
94
1
the great rhetors and philosophers, Libanius, Himerius, Themistius
Hypatia, clung to the old religion. Zacharias of Mytilene gives ;
vivid picture of university life at Alexandria at the end of the fifth
century. Several of the professors and a considerable number of
the students were pagans, and frequented a secret temple at
Menuthis nearby, a building covered with hieroglyphs and housing
a huge assortment of idols of dogs, cats, and monkeys in wood,
bronze and stone. At Berytus, too, where Zacharias went on to
study law, a number of the students practised magical rites in
secret. At Athens the professors remained pagans until Justinian's
law deprived them of their chairs. 6
In the West the upper classes seem to have abandoned the old
religion by the latter part of the fifth century. In the East even
after Justinian's penal legislation many of the aristocracy, while
outwardly conforming, not only retained their old beliefs but
continued to celebrate the cult in secret. Ill. 5 29 many persons of
high station, including Thomas the quaestor, Asclepiodotus, a
former prefect, and Phocas, a patrician, were denounced and
convicted. At a second purge in 5 46 many senators, grammarians,
sophists, lawyers and doctors were punished. In 578 under
Tiberius Constantine there was another round-up of pagans in
high places, arising out of the incident at Edessa mentioned above.
7
Peasants in all ages have been intensively conservative, and
Christianity from its earliest days had been a predominantly urban
religion, whose missionaries travelled from town to town, neg-
lecting the intervening countryside. It is not therefore surprising
that in most parts of the empire the rural population remained
pagan long after the towns were mostly Christian. Martin of Tours
in the last quarter of the fourth century found many flourishing
village temples in his diocese and was active in destroying them.
In the Alps the Anauni of the territory of Tridentum were still
untouched by Christianity in the last years of the fourth century,
and lynched a Cappadocian priest who ventured to build a church
in one of their villages. Two generations later Maximus of Turin
urged his congregation not to connive at pagan rites on their
estates, where temples, altars and images still survived.
8
In the East John Chrysostom similarly appealed to the great
landowners of Constantinople to convert the pagan tenants of
their estates, and to build churches and endow priests to serve them.
In Syria hermits did much to convert the countryside in the late
fourth and early fifth centuries. Theodoret tells how Abram settled
in the pagan village of Libanus, and by successfully intervening
on behalf of the inhabitants with the tax collectors won such
popularity that the whole village was converted and built a church
and elected him their priest. Theodoret himself with
peasants near Gabala who had been weaned from pagamsm by
the hermit Thalalaeus, whose prayers had expelled the local god
from his temple. 9 . .
Paganism lingered yet later among nomadic popu!at!ons on
the fringe of the empire. The Arab of the Synan desert
began, it is true, to be converted even ill fourth century,
when in Valens' reign the Saracen queen Mav1a demanded as a
condition of renewing her treaty with the Roman government
that a local hermit of renown, named Moses, should be consecrated
bishop for her tribe. The process continued in the fifth century.
Aspebetus, a pagan sheikh who had migrated from the Persian
zone and been appointe.d of the Saracens. of
Arabia was converted w1th all his tnbe by the hernut Euthynuus,
who his son, and another bishopric 'of the encampments' was
established. But the Nobades of Nubia and the Blemmyes of the
Eastern desert of Egypt remained pagans in the sixth century,
enjoying by treaty the of the image of
Isis from the temple of Philae, until J ust!man closed the temple
and removed the statue to Constantinople: he later succeeded in
converting the Nobades to Christianity. Justinian also closed
the temple of Ammon at which the nomads of h.ad
hitherto frequented, and built illstead a church of the V !rgill.
Further west the nomad Moorish tribes of Tripolitania, Africa,
Numidia and Mauretania were still pagan when Justinian re-
conquered these regions from Vandals. On the n'?rthern fron-
tiers many of the East German tnbes were converted ill the fourth
century, including the Goths. and the Vandals, b.ut the Franks on
the Rhine remained pagans till the days of Clov1s.
10
But if broadly speaking it is true that the rural areas of the empire
and its barbarian fringe longest remained pagan, there were many
local exceptions. Not only were there some rural areas t.hat were
early Christianised; there were some. t'?wr;s which !ong
remained obstinately pagan. In Mnca Chnst1amty was w1dely
over the countryside .as early as. the third century, but
the towns of Calama, Madaura and Sufes were apparently still
predominantly pagan in the early fifth. Replying to a fulsome
letter from the council of Madaura Augustine suggests that before
invoking the aid of a bishop they might adopt the Christian faith.
At Calama the populace, in defiance of the law of 407, provocatively
celebrated a pagan festival, and when the local clergy tried to inter-
vene beat them up, killing one, and attacked the church: these
diso;ders were connived at by the notables of the town and
probably, Augustine suggests, promoted by them. At Sufes the
PAGANS
943
destruction by the Christians of an image of Hercules led to a riot
in which sixty of them were killed: here again the council, according
to Augustine, gave support to the pagans.U
In Mesopotamia Edessa had been converted in the early third
century, but its neighbour Carrhae remained pagan till the end of
Roman rule and even later. Antioch was already in Julian's reign
a thoroughly Christian city; at Apamea the citizens vigorously
defended their temples under Theodosius I, and the bishop had to
hire gladiators to overpower them. Heliopolis is spoken of as a
pagan town under Valens; it Still was so, as we have seen, under
Tiberius Constantine. Maiuma, the port of Gaza, was already
predominantly Christian in Constantine's reign, but Gaza itself
remained pagan nearly a century later; under Constantius Il it
had only one Christian decurion. In the reign of Arcadius the
temples still functioned openly despite Theodosius I's penal laws,
and it was only by obtaining a special order from Constantinople
that the bishop of the tiny Christian community was able to get
them demolished.l2
Paganism was not a heroic faith, and could boast few martyrs.
At Alexandria a devoted band, led by a philosopher, Olympius,
occupied the Serapeum when it was threatened with destruction in
Theodosius' reign, and stood a regular siege. At Gaza and Raphia
in Palestine, at Petra and Areopolis in Arabia, and at Apamea in
Syria, the pagans put up a fight for their temples at the same period,
but in general the official ban on pagan worship seems to have been
submissively accepted. Nevertheless passive resistance was wide-
spread and prolonged, and pagans were prepared to pay, lf not to
suffer, for their faith.J3
There were still some, as the severe . penal legislation
against apostates shows, who deserted Christianity for the
old religion. The first extant law against apostates was issued by
Theodosius in 3 8 r : it deprived them of the right of making
wills. Two years later their disabilities were increased both by
Theodosius and by Gratian. In 391 Honorius deprived them of
any rank which they had inherited or earned. As late as 426
Valentinian Ill found it necessary to re-enact the penalties against
apostates. These measures imply that the spirit of paganism was not
yet crushed. Even in the reign of Zeno the pagans of the. East
still cherished hopes that the old gods would come into their own
again. When Illus raised his rebellion, Zacharias of Mitylene
tells us, the pagans of Caria celebrated sacrifices, encouraged
by an oracle which declared that the allotted span of Christianity
was terminated, and that the reign of the old gods was to be
restorec\.
14
I i[
944
RELIGION AND MORALS
Despite the ruthless measures taken by Hadrian during and after
the great rebellion of Barcochbar a considerable Jewish population
survived in Palestine. In Jerusalem and J udaea proper the Jews
seem to have been completely exterminated, but Galilee, with the
two cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris (or Diocaesarea), remained
solidly Jewish. Epiphanius tells the interesting story of J oseph,
a Jewish convert, who in the reign of Constantine endeavoured to
build churches in Tiberias, Sepphoris, Nazareth and Capernaum.
With imperial support he managed to convert a derelict temple
of Hadrian into a church at Tiberias, and built a small church at
Sepphoris, but local opposition proved too strong, and he ulti-
mately retired to Scythopolis. There was a serious Jewish revolt
in Galilee under Gallus Caesar, who as a penal measure destroyed
Diocaesarea.
15
A strong Samaritan community also survived in Palestine. Its
centre was at Neapolis, by the national sanctuary of Shechem,
but Samaritans were numerous in Caesarea and Scythopolis also.
They rebelled in the reign of Marcian, and plundered and destroyed
the churches of the area. A more serious revolt broke out in 5 29,
when one J ulianus, described as a brigand, was proclaimed
emperor and celebrated chariot races at Neapolis: a hundred thou-
sand people are said to have been killed in the course of its suppres-
sion. Towards the end of Justinian's reign there was yet another
rebellion, whose centre was at Caesarea, in which both Jews and
Samaritans joined.16
The great majority of the Jewish people, however, lived scattered
throughout the empire, and beyond its boundaries in Persia and
the Arab kingdoms along the Red Sea coast. There is evidence for
considerable Jewish communities in many cities both of the Eastern
and the Western parts. The Jews of the dispersion seem to have
been mostly urban, and are frequently mentioned as traders, but
there were some on the land. Libanius possessed an estate, probably
near Antioch, which was cultivated by Jewish tenants, and Pope
Gregory found that there were Jews among the coloni of the church
lands in Sicily. Samaritans are less frequently mentioned outside
Palestine, but a group is recorded in Upper Egypt, and Cassiodorus
mentions their synagogue at Rome: Gregory also speaks of them
at Catana and Syracuse in SicilyY
The Jewish community throughout the empire was until 429,
when the line died out, subject to a succession of hereditary
patriarchs, who resided at Tiberias; the hereditary principle had its
JEWS AND SAMARITANS 945
disadvantages, as the patriarchate sometimes devolved on children,
and some patriarchs exploited their office for their own profit,
selling appointments to the highest bidder. The patriarchs
nominated all the clergy of the synagogues, who are styled in the
codes by a variety of titles, priests (hiereis), elders (maiores, prcs-
byteri), heads of the synagogue (archisynagogi), or finally fathers
(patres) or patriarchs (patriarchae). They were assisted by a body of
apostoli, who were sent out to the provinces to inspect the syna-
gogues and exercise disciplinary control over them, and to collect
the dues, described by Epiphanius as first fruits and tithes, by the
laws as crown gold, which they paid to the patriarchate. The
patriarch was normally accorded high official rank by the imperial
government. He is alluded to as illustris in laws of 392 and 396-7,
and as spectabilis in 404. In 4I 5 Gamaliel was deprived of the
honorary prefecture which had been bestowed upon him; but this
was a penalty for exceeding his powers, and he was allowed to
retain the rank which he had held before the supreme honour of
the prefecture was conferred.lB
Jewish worship had been not only recognised but protected
by the pagan empire, and this recognition and protection was on
the whole maintained by the Christian emperors despite the
increase in antisernitism which Christianity produced. A number
of laws declare that synagogues are not to be burned or sacked,
and enact that, if such incidents have occurred, the buildings are
to be restored and the loot returned, unless they have been con-
secrated to Christian use, in which case monetary compensation
is to be paid. By the early fifth century however, the erection of
new synagogues had been prohibited-it was one of the charges
against the patriarch Gamaliel that he had broken this rule-and
this regulation was re-enacted in 423 and 438. The repair of
existing synagogues was, however, expressly authorised. The
Samaritans appear to have enjoyed similar toleration until Justinian
in 5 29 demolished their synagogues, thus provoking the revolt of
Julianus.
19
Worship was not to be interrupted, though the Jews on their
side were warned to refrain from provocative rites, such as the
ceremonial burning of the cross at the feast of Aman. In the sixth
century the synagogue at Tarracina was suppressed because it was
adjacent to a church, and the Jewish chanting offended Christian
ears, but a new site was allocated to the congregation. Even
Justinian made no attempt to suppress Jewish worship, or even
to regulate it, except in one particular case. There was in his day a
division of opinion in the Jewish communities, some wishing the
scripture to be read in Greek, as had probably been the common
RELIGION AND MORALS
practice, and others insisting on the exclusive use of Hebrew.
Petitions were made to the emperor by the rival parties and
Justinian, hoping that the Jews, if they listened to the scriptures in
the vulgar tongue, might be convinced by the prophecies of
Christ which they contained, authorised the use of Greek (or
Latin when that was the normal language of the congregation)
when the community concerned desired it. He recommended the
Septuagint, but allowed the version of Aquila (although his
translation of some key passages was less favourable to Christian
interpretation). He further took the opportunity of prohibiting
the teaching of the Deuterosis (probably the Talmudic com-
mentaries) as being unscriptural.
2
0
Synagogues were exempt from billeting, and their staffs enjoyed
an immunity from curial charges similar to that accorded to the
Christian clergy, if more limited; by a law of Constantine only two
or three persons from each synagogue enjoyed the privilege.
This immunity was withdrawn in the West in 383. In the East it
was confirmed in 397, but may have been revoked two years later;
it certainly no longer existed in Justinian's day. It was forbidden
to take legal proceedings against Jews on the Sabbath. Religious
jurisdiction over Jews was exercised by the patriarch or his deputies,
.who had the power of expelling disobedient members from the
community: in a law of 392 provincial governors were forbidden
to bring pressure on the Jewish authorities to readmit those whom
they had expelled. The Jewish authorities had moreover a recog-
nised voluntary jurisdiction in civil disputes. Disputes between
Jews could be referred to them by consent of the parties, and their
judgments were in such cases enforced by the imperial authorities.
The patriarch Gamaliel exercised his jurisdiction even in cases
between Jews and Christians; but this was another of the reasons
why he was deprived of his honorary prefecture, and the practice
was henceforth forbidden. The Jewish authorities also fixed prices
for Jewish traders, and provincial governors were forbidden to
appoint controllers for them. 21
Against these privileges, which were an inheritance from the
pagan empire, are to be set a growing series of disabilities. Inter-
marriage between Jews and Christians was declared by Theodosius
to be tantamount to adultery and subjected to the same penalties:
the rule was reproduced in Justinian's Code. Constantine forbade
Jews to circumcise their slaves, and declared slaves thus treated
to be free. His son Constantius II made the circumcision of a slave
a capital offence, and furthermore forbade Jews to buy slaves of
any religion but their own. This rule was somewhat relaxed by
Honorius in 415 and by Theodosius II in the East two years later.
Jews were permitted to retain Christian slaves provided that they
did not interfere with their religion, and to inherit them on the
same condition: the acquisition of Christian slaves by purchase or
gift was still forbidden to Jews. Justinian forbade the possession
of Christian slaves by Jews, freeing the slave and fining the owner
30 lb. gold.
22
A letter of Julian to the Jewish community reveals that under
Constantius II the Jews had been subjected to vexatious special
levies (discriptiones). Julian forbade the practice and destroyed the
records, and thereafter the Jews were not made the victims of any
special fiscal extortion. Nothing is heard even of the poll tax of
two denarii imposed by Vespasian, which probably lapsed during
the third century inflation. In 399, when relations were very
strained between the Eastern and Western governments, Stilicho
ordered that the dues collected from the synagogues of Honotius'
dominions should no longer be transmitted to the patriarch, a
subject of Arcadius, but be confiscated to the imperial treasury:
but this law was revoked five years later. On the lapse of the
patriarchate in 429 these dues were permanently assigned to the
!argitiones. The collection in the East was enforced by the pa!atini,
and any sums which came from the West were to be likewise
confiscated.
23
During the Principate few Jews except renegades seem to have
entered the imperial service, or even to have taken any part in
municipal life, save in predominantly Jewish cities like Tiberias:
no doubt they feared to incur ritual pollution, or to be forced to
break the sabbath-for which reason the Roman government
exempted them from military service. It thus came about thatJ ews,
since they had never served on city councils, claimed immunity
from membership of the curia when this became a burden rather
than an honour. This claim was naturally challenged by the cities,
and Constantine, in response to a petition from the council of
Agrippina, expressly disallowed it. Early in Honorius' reign the
Jews of Apulia and Calabria appear to have made a concerted
attempt to secure exemption on the basis of a constitution of Ar-
cadius. Their claim was denied, and a year later the Eastern govern-
ment also reasserted the liability of Jews to the curia.'lA
From the fourth century Jews appear to have entered municipal
life and the imperial service in increasing numbers. We know
of very few specific examples, it is true. At Magona in the Balearic
Isles we happen to hear that in 4I 8 a father of the synagogue,
Caecilianus, was defensor civitatis, and the leading rabbi, Theodorus,
occupied an even more prominent position, having held all the
local offices, including that of defensor, and being now patron of
948
RELIGION AND MORALS
the city. Another practising Jew, Lectorius, had recently been
governor of the province and obtained the rank of comes. Better
evidence of the infiltration of Jews into public life is to be found in
the legislation forbidding it. In 404 Honorius expelled Jews
(and Samaritans) from the agentes in rebus, and in 418 from the
army. By the same law he debarred them for the future from all
branches of the civil service-the palatine ministries and the agentes
in rebus are specially mentioned-while allowing those already
enrolled to complete their careers. Jews were, however, expressly
permitted to practise at the bar.
2
5
The Eastern government followed suit in 43 8 with a severer
law, debarring Jews and Samaritans from all dignitates and militiae,
including even the lowly post of defensor civitatis; they were not,
however, relieved of the onerous service of the cohortalini, nor yet
from the curia. By the law of Leo, which declared that only ortho-
dox Christians might be barristers, Jews were also excluded from
the legal profession. This remained the law under Justinian, who
sharpened it by adding to the list of prohibited posts that of curator
or pater civitatis, and by depriving Jews and Samaritans of the
meagre privileges which still attached to curial rank while holding
them to its onerous obligations.2
6
Except for their exclusion from the public service and the bar
the Jews thus incurred no serious civil disabilities until the reign
of Justin. He applied to them (and to Samaritans) the same penal
laws which he enacted against pagans and heretics. Like them they
were debarred from making wills or receiving inheritances, from
giving testimony in a court of law, or indeed from performing
any legal act.
27
In the relative toleration accorded to Jews down to the reign of
Justinian the imperial government was undoubtedly fighting a
rearguard action against the mounting pressure of public opinion.
Antisemitism was widespread at least as far back as the reign of
Augustus, and in places where the Jewish community was large,
such as Alexandria, there were frequent explosions of popular
violence. Christiadty added theological animus to the general
dislike of the Jews, and the numerous diatribes against them, in the
form of sermons or pamphlets, which Christian leaders produced,
must have fanned the flames. It is surprising, indeed, that the
emperors, most of whom shared the popular view, maintained
such mqderation in their legal enactments: the language of Con-
stantine, for instance, in his laws, and even more in his letter on
the date of Easter, is strangely at variance with his quite restrained
and fair-minded enactments. The Jewish community certainly had
some influence, particularly as long as the patriarchate existed to
voice its views. There is some evidence for this in the fact that
several laws which reassert Jewish privileges are addressed to the
community or its official representatives, and are presumably in
response to petitions and delegations. But the attitude of the
emperors seems to have been mainly inspired by respect for the
established law. The Jews had since the days of Caesar been
guaranteed the practice of their ancestral religion and the govern-
ment shrank from annulling this ancient privilege.
28
The responsible heads of the church normally followed the
same line. Ambrose, who by spiritual terrors bullied Theodosius
I into revoking his just decision that the bishop of Callinicum should
rebuild the synagogue which he had burned down, and would
not even allow the emperor to compensate the Jews from the
treasury, appears to have been excej:>tiona! in bigotry. There
were bishops who took the lead m ant!-J ew1sh outrages, but
generally these were due to the mob or to monks.
sixth and early seventh centuries a number of episcopal councils m
Merovingian Gaul and the Visigothic kingdom passed a series of
canons about the Jews, but for the most part these merely
on the enforcement of the existing legal bans on Jews' holdmg
public office or circumcising or acquiring Christian slaves: in the
last case reasonable compensation was given for the loss of the
slaves. The only novelties are a prohibition of chanting at Jewish
funerals (alleged to be an innovation) and the confinement of
Jews to their houses during Eastertide. Gregory the Great's
attitude to the Jews was strictly fair. While scrupulous t_o enforce
the laws against Jews' acquiring Christian slayes, pa1d prol?er
compensation and made allowance for the d1fficult1es of J ew1sh
slave dealers who were commissioned to buy Christian slaves by
persons in authority. On the other hand he was insistent that
synagogues must not be destroyed and be
given when this took place. And he set h1s face agamst the bapt1sm
of Jews under threats _of force.
29
.
Forcible mass bapt1sms had occurred sporadically as. early as
the beginning of the fifth century. In 4I 8 bishop _of
Iammona in the Balearic Isles, encouraged by the amval of rehcs
of St. Stephen, marched his flock across to the neighbouring city
of Magona, and, having burned down their synagogue,
5 40 Jews to accept baptism. But measures. first came
prominence towards the end of the. slxth m the
kingdoms of the West. In 576 A v1tus, b1shop of agam
taking advantage of the terror produced by the burmng of. the
local synagogue, laid before the Jewish comn:unity the
of baptism or exile. Five hundred submltted, the remamder
?50
RELIGION AND MORALS
migrating to Marseilles. In .58 3 King Chilperic ordered the baptism
of a large number of Jews at Paris. In 59 I the bishops of Nai:bo
and Arelate were reproved by Pope Gregory for forcibly baptising
the Jewish inhabitants of their cities. In Spain King Sisebut
(6u-zo) ordered all the Jews of his kingdom to receive baptism.
The first Roman emperor to enforce baptism on the Jews was
Heraclius.
30
The Jews and Samaritans were the only minority who reacted
to persecution with active hostility. They rose in rebellion several
times, and when under Phocas and Heraclius the Persians invaded
Syria and Palestine they seized the opportunity to burn the churches,
loot the houses of the Christians and force them to deny their
faith or massacre them. They alone openly rejoiced at the calamities
of the empire and welcomed its fall. We have contemporary
evidence that the Jews of Palestine exulted when the Roman
commander Sergius was overwhelmed and killed by the Arab
invaders at the end of Heraclius' reign. 31
From the earliest times there had been periodic divisions of
opinion among Christians, and these conflicts had been resolved
by the expulsion of such minority groups as refused to conform
to the general consensus of the church. Many of these groups had
died out, but a substantial number survived as dissident sects or
heresies, which often in their turn split into smaller groups.
Constantine was distressed to find that besides the catholic church
there were a number of other bodies which, while claiming to be
Christian, maintained theological views which the catholic church
had condemned, or which refused on other grounds to communi-
cate with it. He strove to reconcile some of them to the church,
and, when his efforts proved unavailing, endeavoured to suppress
them all by administrative action, confiscating their churches and
forbidding their religious meetings.a2
From this time onwards the imperial government normally, if
not v_ery penalised dissidents in various degrees, but
heresies and schisms nonetheless continued to proliferate. Under
hi.mself, and his utmost efforts, the Donatists
seceded m Afnca, and while his attempts to heal the Arian contro-
. versy :vere temporarily successful, the .disp.ute broke out again
after his death, and the final condemnation m 3 8 I of the various
schools of thought which rejected the homoousian doctrine led to
the formation of new groups of sectaries. It does not appear that
these sects had much following within the empire, but unfortunately
HERETICS
95 I
the Goths were converted during the period when Arian views
were in the ascendant in the East, and they and other East German
tribes clung obstinately to their Arian faith.
The next serious controversy was between the Monophysites
and the Dyophysites. Monophysism obtained no foothold in the
Latin-speaking church, but in the East opinion was very evenly
divided. After many hesitations and changes of front, the imperial
government eventually, two generations after Chalcedon, came
down on the Dyophysite side, but the vast majority of Egyptians
and a substantial number of people in Syria, as well as smaller
groups elsewhere, refused to accept this decision, and formed
dissident churches.
The Donatists were always strong in Africa, and at times out-
numbered the Catholics. The Arian Goths, Burgundians and
Vandals formed substantial minorities in Italy, southern Gaul,
Spain and Africa. In Egypt Monophysites were in an over-
whelming majority, and in Syria they were very numerous. With
these exceptions the heretical and schismatic sects seem to have
been numerically negligible. Some were geographically wide-
spread. Manichees, for instance, were to be found not only in
the East, but in Italy and in Africa, where they were especially
strong. Marcionites, according to Epiphanius, were to be found
not only in Egypt and the Thebaid, Arabia, Palestine, Syria and
Cyprus, but also in Italy. But the majority of the sects were con-
fined to limited regions. Some were and always had been strictly
local. Donatists did not exist outside Mrica, nor Melitians outside
Egypt. Others had never spread much beyond their home lands;
Priscillianism for instance does not seem to have penetrated beyond
Spain. Others again which once had a wide vogue had shrunk:
Montanism, which had in the second and third centuries invaded
Africa, was by the fifth restricted to its original homeland in
Phrygia and some adjacent provinces, and the Novatians survived
only in north-western Asia Minor. In general the Latin-speaking
half of the empire was less troubled by heresies than the East.
Western Christians were not on the whole interested in the meta-
physical controversies which produced so many dissident groups
in the East, and apart from the Donatists, the Priscillianists and
the Pelagians, produced few heresies of their own. The Eastern
provinces on the other hand pullulated with queer eccentric sects,
many of them of very ancient origin.
33
If the heretical sects were for the most part small, they were
extremely numerous. It is scarcely possible from the evidence at
our disposal to estimate how many sects existed at any given time.
Epiphanius towards the end of the fourth century wrote a learned
95
and scholarly work on the heresies, of which he enumerated 6o.
Philastrius, bishop of Brixia, in a very uncritical summary, brought
the total up to 128. Augustine, who used both their books,
nevertheless reduced the figure to 87. Theodoret, in a well-
informed little treatise, brought down the total still further to 56.
All these figures are, as Augustine remarks in the introductory
letter to his work, somewhat arbitrary, as the authors differed as to
what exactly constituted a heresy. Moreover all four works are-
or profess to be-historical, and include extinct, and perhaps
mythical, heresies of the past; nor do they draw any clear line
between organised sects and aberrant opinions. Imperial con-
stitutions which enumerate the sects which they penalise are
perhaps a safer guide, but they often increase the total by the use of
synonymous names: on the other hand none of them gives an
exhaustive list. A constitution of Theodosius II yields 2 3 names,
two or three of which are synonyms; Justinian in his version of
the same law adds another eleven, a few of which are again merely
verbal variants.
34
The distinctive doctrines and practices of the sects were many
and various. Some, like the Arians, Macedonians and Mono-
physites, differed from the catholic church on some purely meta-
physical point of theology. The Quartodecimans were peculiar
only in celebrating Easter on the Jewish Passover, the fourteenth
day of Nisan. Other sects had broken off on disciplinary issues.
The Novatians, or as they called themselves, the Pure (uaBaeol),
had objected to the reconciliation of those who had sacrificed
in the Decian persecution, holding that those who committed a
mortal sin after baptism must remain for ever excommunicate.
The Donatists similarly refused to receive back those who had
surrendered the scriptures in the Diocletianic persecution, and
regarded the catholic hierarchy as polluted because, as they
alleged, Caecilian of Carthage had been consecrated by a traditor.
The Melitians in Egypt split off on sinu1ar grounds, and later the
Luciferians refused to communicate with the catholic church
because it readmitted Arians.
Other sects diffe.red more radically from the norm. The Mani-
chees, though regarded by the imperial government and the church
as Christians, might almost be classified as a separate religion.
They taught a dualist view of the universe probably derived from
Zoroastrianism, and while accepting Christ regarded the doctrine
of their own prophet Mani as the final revelation. They preached
an extreme asceticism, which was however practised only by a select
inner group, the E!ecti, the ordinary believers or Auditores being
allowed to live more or less normal lives. There were many other
HERETICS
953
smaller sects, which, though historically unconnected with Mani-
chaeism, and mostly older than it, held a basically similar dualistic
view of the universe, and preached similar extreme ascetic practices
on the ground that all material things were evil. Prominent among
them were the Marcionites, founded in the reign of Hadrian by
Marcion, who rejected the Old Testament and taught that its God,
the demiurge who had created the material world, was evil; and
the Montanists, who followed the teaching of Montanus, Priscilla
and Maximilla, prophets who had arisen in Phrygia in the second
century. These and many other sects, some of much later origin,
were usually teetotallers and vegetarians, and condemned all sexual
intercourse as sinful: some, like the followers of Eustathius
condemned by the Council of Gangra, went so far as to encourage
women to abandon their husbands and children and put on male
attire, and even condemned private property and incited slaves
to leave their masters.
We need not believe all the fantastic doctrines and grotesque
practices which catholic writers attributed to the sectarians. The
allegation that the Montanists pricked an infant all over to obtain
blood for their sacramental ceremony, and reverenced their
victim as a martyr if.it died, and as a saint if it survived and grew
up, is a variant of a libel brought against all Christians in the early
centuries, and later transferred to the Jews. One may have one's
doubts about the Ophitae, who revered the serpent as the giver
of wisdom to mankind, and kept a tame snake in a box, releasing
it on to the altar to sanctify the bread at the communion. Epipha-
nius is himself somewhat sceptical about the Adamians, who, he
had been informed from several sources, worshipped stark naked,
and very sensibly provided their churches, or paradises, with
cloakrooms and hypocausts. 3
5
But there certainly were very curious communities on the
lunatic fringe of Christianity. Theodoret personally met an aged
Marcionite who had all his life washed his face in his own spittle,
to avoid using water, the creation of the demiurge. Augustine
records from personal knowledge the practices of the Abelonii,
a sect which survived to his own day in a village of his own city
of Hippo. They held that marriage and continence were obligatory
on all believers. Each couple adopted a boy and girl, who on the
death of both foster parents, succeeded to the family farm and
in turn adopted a boy and a girl. There was never any difficulty,
Augustine tells us, in maintaining the sect, as neighbouring villages
were always ready to provide children to be adopted in the certainty
of ultimately acquiring a farm.
36
The penalties inflicted on heretics varied in severity according
to, the _general policy of the government fr()m time to time and
accordmg to opprobrium in which the various sects were held.
Normally the1r were meetings
banned, ar:d any building or estate, m wh1ch the1r meetings were
held, to the crown. Sometimes their clergy were specially
penalised; m 392 a f_ine <?fro lb. g<;>ld was imposed on all heretical
clergy, and b1s.hops, pnests and deacons were in
415
thr:atened. With deportation. At the same period in Africa the
pohcy was of inflicting crushing fines, graded according
to .. the offender s :rank, .on all Donatists who refused to reconcile
to the catholic church. Members of the more ob-
sects fr<;>m t!me to time declared incapable of
makmg or of mhentances. This disability was inflicted
on t.he m 381, and again in 407 and 445 in the West
and 1n428m th_e East. It was also imposed in 3 89 on the Eunomians:
an Anan sect, be in 394, reimposed and again
revoked m 395, yet. agam renutted in 399, having been apparently
re-enact7d meanwhile, and finally reimposed in
4
Io.37
were also from time to time debarred from the public
or at any rate. from its higher branches. This penalty was
Imposed ?Y Theodosrus I on all heretics, and in
395
Arcadius
his of the offices to conduct a purge of the palatine
mlntstnes; Honorms took the same step in 408. The more detested
sects,. such as Manichees, Eunomians and Montanists were later
excluded from all grades of the. public service, civil' or milita ..
except the cohorta!es and the !imitanei. Leo, as we have se2:"'
excluded all but orthodox Christians from the bar. as '
-:r:he death p_enalty w_as very rarely invoked. Manichees had been
subJecte? to lt by some years before he began the
persecution ?f the Christians. Theodosius I in 3 82 imposed it not
on. the Mamchees, proper, but on three extremist sects which he
as even more sinister variants of Manicheism, the En-
crantes, the I;J:ydroparastatae (who used water instead of wine in
the. commumon) and the Saccophori.. In 5 Io Manichees were
subJected to the penalty. by Anastasius, and this remained
the under tightened up the legislation against
reinforcmg the on the pJlblic service and
lt to all sects, and debarrmg . all heretics from takin
or bequeathing their estates to any but th d g
mom
Despite penal laws the heretical sects stubbornly survived.
The they to have been crushed by the
systematic waged agamst in the early fifth centu
by the combmed forces of the catholtc church and the imperi
1
ij
HERETICS
955
government, raised their heads again. At the end of the sixth
century Pope Gregory received alarming reports from Africa.
they were rebaptising catholics _in large numbers and even .se1zmg
catholic churches, and he felt lt necessary not only to stimulate
the African bishops to action, and h? demand governmental st;pport
from the pnietorian prefect of Afrtca, but to send a delegation of
to Maurice t<? enlist his aid. Donatists were,
it IS true, a large sect w1th w1de popular but th_e parallel
sect in Egypt, the Melitians, who never achieved any w1desread
success even in the early fourth century, nevertheless survived.
They still existed in the time of who notes that
had introduced instrumental music (that of the old Egyptian
sistrum) and dancing into their services. A document of 5 I 2
reveals a monk who describes himself as formerly Melitian, now
orthodox, selling a monastery near Arsinoe to a Melitian priest.
The sect still flourished a century after the Arab conquest.4
Our sources which are almost entirely hostile and controversial,
tell us very little of the inner life of the heretical sects, and it is
difficult to gauge their social composition. The majority of the
sectaries seem to have been humble people, and many of them were
countryfolk. Procopius s_peaks victims . of Justinian's
campaign against the heresies as bemg m simple peasants;
the Montanists ofPhrygia, who rather than subnut, themselves
up in their churches and set fire to them, were certaJnly so. Theo-
doret too records that in the territory of Cyrrhus he had con-
verted, ri;king considerable personal danger, villa_ges _of
Marcionites one of Arians and one of Eunom1ans; he 1mplres
that the to;,n was free of heresy. A document inserted in the
acts of the Council of Ephesus gives an interesting glimpse of a
little group of sectaries at in Lydia .. It is a copy _of
the recantations of 19 Quartodeclmans and 5 Novat1ans (the maJority
of whom had adopted the Quartodeciman Easter in the reign of
Valens). Only four are villagers; the rest are from the
but half of them are illiterate. They include, however, a decurton
and a barrister. This perhaps gives a not untypical cross-section of
the more respectable We know more than
about most. Here it rs clear that the great maJ ortty were s1mple
folk, who did not even know Latin; Augustine had often to a_sk
for an interpreter to argue with them, and was short of Fume-
speaking clergy to take charge of M?st of them were
country from the estates, and lrttle rural. towns;
it was from thts class that the extrenust wmg of the Donat1sts, the
circumcellions were drawn. But the Donatist church had also
among its le;ders men of standing and culture, barristers like
FF
l
RELIGION AND MORALS
Petilian or professors like Cresconius, who could keep their end
up in learned controversy with Augustine himself. It is significant,
too, that the sliding scale of fines imposed on Donatist recusants
is graded for illustres, spectabiles, c!arissimi, sacerdotales and princi-
pales as well as for decurions, negotiatores and plebeians.
41
We also know something of the Novatians in Asia Minor, thanks
to Socrates, who took a sympathetic interest in their affairs. Here
again the majority were simple rustics, Phrygians and Paphlago-
nians, and the rigid tenets of the sect appealed to them, as Socrates
explains, because they were naturally rather puritanical: they were
not addicted to theatres or horse races, and held irregular sexual
relations. in abhorrence. It was the rank and file of the country
Novatians who in Valens' reign, at a congress held at Pazus, a
remote village near the source of the Sangarius, adopted the
fundamentalist view of the Quartodecimans about the date of
Easter. The congress was not attended by the four chief Novatian
bishops, those of Constantinople, Nicaea, Nicomedia and Coti-
aeum, who generally regulated the worship of the sect. They
evidently disliked the reactionary movement among the rural
Novatians, and a schism threatened, but was averted by another
council, where the bishops with unusual good sense agreed to
differ, declaring the date of Easter a matter of indifference.
42
The Novatians of Constantinople were evidently more sophis-
ticated than their Phrygian and Paphlagonian brothers, and included
men of rank and learning. Marcian, who became their bishop in
3 8 5, had previously been a palatine civil servant, and had acted as
tutor to Valens' daughters. His successor, Sisinnius, was a highly
cultivated man, a pupil of the great pagan philosopher Maximus,
under whom Julian had studied, a subtle controversialist whom
the Arian Eunomius dared not face, and the author of many
literary works, whose style Socrates considered too ornate and
poetic. He moved in the best senatorial circles, and was rather a
dandy, wearing white instead of the usual episcopal black, and was
a celebrated wit. Socrates records a number of his repartees, and
one is worth quoting. Asked why, being a bishop, he took two
baths a day, he replied: 'Because I have not time for a third.' Later
Novatian bishops of Constantinople were severer characters, but
kept up the aristocratic and scholarly traditions of the see. Paul
was a Latin scholar, a distinction rare in fifth-century Constan-
tinople,and Chrysanthus, Marcian's son, had been a consular in Italy
and vicar of Britain, and was in the running for the prefecture of
the city when he was consecrated. He ordained a distinguished
rhetorician, Ablabius, who later became Novatian bishop of
Nicaea.
43
THE GROWTH OF SUPERSTITION
957
It is clifficult to make any generalisation which is both true and
significant about the religious temper of an age, but it may at
least be asserted with some confidence that the later Roman
empire was intensely religious. Sceptics and rationalists, if they
existed, have left no mark on history and literature. All, pagans,
Jews and Christians alike, believed, and it would seem believed
intensely, in supernatural powers, benevolent and malign, who
intervened actively in human affairs; all were anxious to win their
aid and favour, or to placate or to master them, as the case might
be. This had probably always been true of the great mass of the
population: by the fourth, and indeed probably by the third
century, the educated minority, who had in the late Republic and
early Principate ceased to believe in the gods, had become religious
once more. Epicureanism, the rationalist and materialist school of
philosophy, seems to have died out by Julian's time, and was
regarded by him with almost as much disfavour as Christianity.
The dominant philosophical school, Neoplatonism, was deeply
impregnated with religion.
44
Pagan intellectuals were usually monotheists or pantheists,
believing in one ineffable divinity who ruled or permeated the
universe; but such beliefs were not incompatible with a deep rever-
ence for and attachment to the old traditional deities. Philosophers
regarded the gods as aspects of or emanations from the supreme
divinity, and believed that their myths and rites were divinely inspired
and appointed, and possessed an esoteric symbolic significance.
Of the beliefs of the ordinary pagan we know little. He no doubt
believed in all the gods, and in the various contingencies of life
might make prayers and vows and offerings to the appropriate
deity, to Asclepius in sickness or Pan on a desert journey. But he
normally paid his devotion to some particular god or group of
gods. Some were devotees of one or more of those deities, like
Isis or Mithras, who had acquired fame throughout the empire,
as not only giving success in this life, but promising bliss beyond
the grave. But the great majority of simple pagans probably
concentrated their devotions on the local god or gods who pro-
tected their city or village. The people of Carthage worshipped
Caelestis, the Heavenly Goddess, those of Alexandria Serapis,
those of Ephesus their own Artemis of the Ephesians, who, though
she might be theoretically identified with other goddesses of the
same name, was in the minds of her citizens a local deity, the
patroness of their city.
il
RELIGION AND MORALS
Christians worshipped the one God, but believed in an infinite
multitude of evil demons, among whom they generally classified
the pagan gods. These demons were considered to be powerful
and dangerous. They often lurked in desecrated temples, but
might be found anywhere, and frequently took possession of
human beings. To judge by the biography of Theodore of Syceon
the peasants of central Asia Minor in the sixth century led an
utterly demon-ridden existence. In several cases farmers in-
advertently removing a rock or digging into a mound released
swarms of demons who took possession not only of them but of
their neighbours and their animals, and the saint had to be sum-
moned to drive the evil spirits into their lair again and seal them in.
This biography is somewhat exceptional in its preoccupation with
demons, but the whole hagiographical literature of the age is ,
permeated with the belief in their ubiquitous presence.
The austere monotheism of the early Christian church did not
long satisfy the religious needs of the multitude of converts who
flowed in from Constantine's reign onwards. There rapidly grew
up a cult of the martyrs, which was soon extended to other holy
men, the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, the
apostles and evangelists, and hermits and ascetics of more modern
times.
It is very difficult to trace the stages in the growth of this
cult. The churches had naturally always cherished the memory
of their martyrs, had reverenced their graves and commemorated
the anniversaries of their deaths. After the Peace of the Church
chapels, called in the West memoriae, and sometimes regular
churches, were built over their tombs, and their commemorations
came to be popular festivities, celebrated on a grand scale and
attended by a vast concourse of worshippers. How early their
prayers were invoked it is impossible to say, but the practice was a
natural corollary of the belief that they had passed straight to
heaven, and could not only hear their suppliants' requests but
present them to God himself. In the doctrine of the church, as
officially taught, this was the limit of their powers. They played
in the heavenly sphere a role analogous to that played on earth
by the great men of the court, through whom petitions could
be more efficaciously brought to the emperor's notice than if they
were directly addressed to him; in the language of the day the
same terms were applied to both heavenly and earthly patrons,
whose suffragia were sought. In answer to critics, pagan and Chris-
tian, the leaders of the church firmly maintained that martyrs and
saints were not worshipped. But in less guarded moments, when
they were pronouncing panegyrics at their festivals, they attributed
959
to them the power of fulfilling the prayers of their suppliants,
and encouraged a devotion which it is difficult to distinguish from
worship.
45
The bodies of the martyrs soon acquired a kind of magical
power. Shortly after the Great Persecution a Carthaginian lady
named Lucilla was reproved by Caecilian, the archdeacon of
Carthage, for carrying a martyr's bone upon her person and kissing
it before communion: she may have cherished it as a memento,
but more probably she regarded it as a charm. A clearer case is the
transfer of S. Babylas' corpse from Antioch to Daphne by Gallus
Caesar (350-4); this was done with the object of expelling the
pagan gods from the famous shrine, and was, we are told, effective,
silencing the oracle of Apollo. By this time the cult and its attendant
miracles must have been in full swing. It was only a few years
later that Hilary asserted that 'the tombs of the apostles and martyrs
proclaim Him (Christ) by the working of miracles', and Basil,
bishop of Caesarea (3 70-8), in a panegyric on St. Mamas, speaks of
the miracles wrought at his shrine as a commonplace.
46
Saints and martyrs evidently satisfied a deep popular craving,
and the demand for their bodies was insatiable. It was supplied
by the miraculous discovery of the tombs either of forgotten
martyrs or of well-known figures of the apostolic age or of Old
Testament times. The most famous and best attested case is the
discovery by Ambrose in 386 of the bodies of SS. Gervasius and
Protasius, which is described by himself and by two contempo-
raries, his biographer Paulinus and Augustine. It is difficult to
attribute a deliberate hoax, as some have done, to a man of
Ambrose's character, but the fact remains that the names of the
two martyrs were unknown until Ambrose, impelled as he says
by a sort of premonition, ordered the floor of a church to be taken
up and discovered their skeletons with an abundance of blood.
Ambrose later discovered another pair, Vitalis and Agricola, at
Bononia, and yet another in a garden at Milan. But he was not
the first to make such discoveries. Pope Damasus (3 66-84) is
recorded to have searched for and found many bodies of saints
at Rome.
4
7
Martin, who became bishop of Tours about 372, visited a mar-
tyr's shrine which had been consecrated by his predecessor
in a place nearby. The saint's name was uncertain and there was no
firm tradition about his passion, and Martin, with a critical sense
unusual for the age, had doubts. Standing before the grave he
prayed for a revelation, and there appeared a sinister wraith which
confessed that he had been in fact a brigand, executed for his
crimes and reverenced by a vulgar error.
48
RELIGION AND MORALS
An African council held in 401 expressed similar doubts. It
decreed that chapels should be consecrated only when there was
an authentic corpse or relic, or a genuine tradition that a martyr
had lived or suffered on the spot, and condemned 'the altars which
are being established everywhere through the dreams or vain
so-called revelations of anybody and everybody'. Such scepticism
was, however, very rare, and discoveries of the bodies of saints,
usually revealed in dreams, went on unabated through the fifth
and sixth centuries in both East and West. One of the most
celebrated and best documented took place at the Palestinian
village of Caphargamala in 415. We possess the statement circu-
lated by the discoverer, the local priest Lucian. Gamaliel appeared
to him three times in a dream and revealed to him where the bodies
of himself and his son, of Nicodemus, and, most precious of all,
of the protomattyr S. Step hen, were to be found: and found they
were, neatly labelled. 49
The bodies of contemporary saints were as much sought after
as those of the ancient martyrs, apostles and prophets. Antony,
who died in 3 56, so disliked the idea of his body becoming an
object of cult, that he charged the two disciples who were with
him when he died to keep the place of his burial a secret. The
corpse of Hilarion, who died in Cyprus in 371, was soon after his
death surreptitiously removed by one of his disciples and brought
back to Palestine, where it became the object of a cult which
flourished in Sozomen's day. In Syria Theodoret records that
shrines were built for several celebrated hermits in anticipation of
their death, and describes the battles between rival villages for
possession of their corpses. Particularly vivid is his eyewitness
account of the neighbouring villagers waiting to pounce upon the
body of the hermit Jacob, who lived on a mountain four miles
from Cyrrhus. So persistent were they that the saint, who was
suffering from acute diarrhoea, was put to great embarrassment
until Theodoret with great difficulty succeeded in driving them
away at nightfall. During a later illness citizens and soldiers
from Cyrrhus by a display of force frightened the local villagers
away and carried the saint, who was in a coma, to the town. He
recovered, however, and was still living when Theodoret wrote. so
In the West there was some sentiment against moving corpses
from their original places of burial. In the East there seems to
have been no such feeling, and the bodies of saints were frequently
translated. It was thus that Constantinople, poor in native martyrs,
was able to acquire a collection of relics which rivalled that of
Rome; Constantius II began the process as early as 3 56, when he
secured the body of S. Timothy, and in the following year those
of S. Andrew and S. Luke. In the East corpses were also
frequently dissected and distributed to various places. This prac-
tice was obviously open to abuse, and soon led to a traffic in
dubious relics of which Augustine complained: for the churches
of the West, though reluctant to disturb their own martyrs' graves
had no qualms in acquiring relics from the East. 51 '
The saints and martyrs, as Theodoret boasts, replaced the pagan
gods: their shrines superseded the temples and their feasts the
old festivals. Like the old gods, they cured the sick, gave children
to barren w'?men, protected travellers from perils of sea and land,
detected perJurors and foretold the future. Some acquired wide-
spread fame for some special power. SS. Cyrus and John, the
physicians who charged no fee, were celebrated for their cures
and their shrine at Canopus, near Alexandria, was thronged by
sufferers from all the provinces, as in the old days had been the
temple of Asclepius at Aegae. But the main function of the saints
and martyrs in the popular religion of the day was to replace the
old gods as local patrons and protectors. S. Martin became for
Tours and S. Demetrius for Thessalonica what Serapis had been
for Alexandria and Artemis for Ephesus.s2
This is not to say that the pagan gods ever became saints. There
is no case where such a transformation is recorded, and it is on the
face of it most unlikely that Christians, who believed that the
pagan gods were malignant demons and were taught to avoid any
contact with their rites as pollution, would have adopted them
into their religion. Martyrs were sometimes translated to pagan
sanctuaries, as was S. Babylas to Daphne, or later SS. Cyrus and
John to Canopus, but with the intent of exorcising the old gods.
Christian festivals were sometimes celebrated on old pagan feast
days, but with the deliberate idea of providing a counter-attraction.
Occasionally myths of the pagan gods and heroes came to be
attached to Christian saints, but the figures to which such myths
were attached were often genuine martyrs. sa
The cult of the saints and martyrs was undoubtedly a popular
movement, but it was not confined to the vulgar. From the
beginning it was welcomed and promoted by the leaders of the
church, including its greatest intellectual figures. The pagan Julian
sneered at 'old women who grovel round tombs', and was con-
troverted by Gregory of Nazianzus and later by Cyril of Alexan-
dria. Faustus the Manichee objected: 'You have transformed idols
into martyrs and honour them in the same way', and was rebuffed
by Augustine. The only orthodox Christian who is recorded to
have raised his voice against the cult of martyrs was an obscure
Aquitanian priest named Vigilantius. He protested that 'we almost
RELIGION AND MORALS
see the rites of the pagans introduced into the churches under the
pretext of religion, ranks of candles are lit in full daylight, and
everywhere people kiss and adore some bit of dust in a little pot,
wrapped in a precious fabric'; and he argued that 'the souls of
the apostles and martyrs rest in the bosom of Abraham or in a
place of refreshment or under the altar of God' and mocked at
the idea that they 'loved their ashes and hovered about them,
and were always on the spot in case they could not hear any
suppliant who came in their absence'. His work is only known to
us because some neighbouring priests, shocked by his impiety,
sent a copy to J erome, who refuted it in a more than usually
vitriolic pamphlet. 54
From what has already been said it is evident that the religion of
the age was riddled with superstition. The common man had
always believed in magic and divination, and astrology, owing
to its pseudo-scientific character, was often accepted by the most
enlightened. All these practices (except for the consultation of
established oracles and of the officially recognised haruspices and
augures of the Roman state) were criminal offences in the law of
the Principate, but they were nevertheless widespread and often
openly tolerated. Christians naturally regarded magic and divina-
tion as sinful, since they involved the invocation of pagan gods
or demons, but they believed in their efficacy. Astrology they
endeavoured to discredit on rational grounds, since the fatalistic
view which it presupposed was contrary to the doctrine of free will
and human responsibility: but it is doubtful whether their argu-
ments had much effect on popular belief.
Towards the end of the third century the belief in and practice
of magic penetrated to the most exalted intellectual circles. Plotinus
and Porphyry had been sceptical and disapproving of theurgy, as
it was called. Porphyry's successor Iamblichus, who flourished
about the turn of the century, openly defended it, and is reputed to
have performed feats of levitation and to have evoked spirits.
The great philosophers at whose feet Julian sat regarded theurgy
as the consummation of their wisdom: Maximus had great powers
-he is recorded to have elicited a smile from a statue and to have
caused the torch it carried to burn-and it was his miracles that
won Julian's devout adherence. ss
Christian miracles followed slightly in the wake of pagan.
Down to about the middle of the fourth century Christian literature
is reasonably free from the miraculous element. With the growth
of the cult of the martyrs a flood of miracles begins. Augustine
was particularly interested in contemporary miracles, and with a
view to giving them greater publicity, instituted a system whereby
the beneficiary wrote a brief narrative (!ibe!!us), which was subse-
quently read out in church and filed for future reference: the same
practice was introduced in the neighbouring towns of Uzalis and
Calama. We possess the actual text of one of these !ibe!!i, incor-
porated among Augustine's works, and it was from this source
that he culled the miracles which he catalogues in the City of God.
We also possess a contemporary account of the miracles performed
at Uzalis, drawn up from !ibe!!i on the instruction of the bishop
Euodius.
56
These documents show that miracles were very frequent
occurrences; Augustine recorded seventy at Hippo in less than two
years. They are mostly cures, with a few resurrections from the
dead, and some revelations of future events. What is most notice-
able about them is their magical character. The result is practically
always achieved by physical contact with the martyr's shrine,
either directly or through some object, usually a piece of cloth,
which has been laid upon .the tomb. Thus the proprietor of a
vineyard at Uzalis, going to his cellar, finds that his entire vintage,
200 jars of wine, is utterly undrinkable. He tells his slave to draw
a little wine from each jar into a flagon, and leave it for the night
in S. Stephen's shrine. Next day the flagon is brought back, and
a little poured from it into each jar, and the entire contents of
the cellar forthwith acquire a superb quality. Such silly stories
had no doubt always been believed by the common herd, but it is
a sign of the times that a man of the intellectual eminence of
Augustine should attach importance to them.s7
One of Augustine's letters is very revealing of the growth of
credulity. A scandal had arisen among his clergy. A priest named
Boniface had accused a junior cleric named Spes of making im-
proper advances to him, and Spes had retorted by turning the
charge against him. It was a case of one man's word against
another's, and Augustine saw no means of getting at the truth,
though he clearly suspected Spes. Meanwhile the retention of the
offender, whichever he was, among the clergy caused scandal to
the church, and the promotion of either was blocked until the slur
could be removed. Augustine's solution was to send them both
to Italy, to swear to their stories before the shrine of S. Felix of
Nola. For, he observes, though God is everywhere present,
particular types of miracle occur in some places and not in others.
He was not aware that any African shrine detected perjurers;
on the other hand he knew of a case at Milan when a thief who
had perjured himself had been compelled to confess. S. Felix
apparently had this power, and Augustine had friends there who
would send a reliable report of the result. It is difficult to believe
RELIGION AND MORALS
that in the second century any judge would have thought of
solving a conflict of evidence by recourse to an oracle.
58
Another notable feature of the age was the profound and wide-
spread interest in dogmatic controversies. That ordinary people
felt passionately on these questions is amply proved by the long
series of riots and commotions which they provoked, and the
stubborn resistance offered to the penal laws against heretics by
thousands of humble Christians. How far the mass of the people
understood the often very subtle metaphysical points involved
may be open to doubt, but it would seem that popular interest in
these controversies, which to us seem so arid, was intense. Gregory
of Nyssa gives an amusing picture of Constantinople in the final
stage of the Arian controversy: 'If you ask about your change,
the shopkeeper philosophises to you about the Begotten and the
Unbegotten; if you enquire the price of a loaf, the reply is: "The
Father is greater and the Son inferior": and if you say, "Is the bath
ready?" the attendant affirms that the Son is of nothing.' Ordinary
people, that is, at least learned the stock arguments and catchwords,
and enjoyed argumentation. 59
Some theologians felt the need of presenting their doctrines in
popular form to attract the masses. Arius composed a poem in a
popular metre, entitled Thaleia, with this intent. Athanasius
has preserved an extract from this work. It begins: 'God himself
then is ineffable to all. He alone has no equal, none like him or of
the same glory. We call him ingenerate because of him that is
generate by nature; we hymn him as without beginning because
of him who has a beginning; we revere him as everlasting because
of him that is born in time.' If the Thaleia was, as Athanasius
alleged, sung in the bars of Alexandria, the lower orders in that
city must have had a strong taste for theology. Augustine also
composed a 'Psalm against the Party of Donatus', 'wishing that
the case of the Donatists should come to the knowledge of the very
lowest classes and of utterly ignorant and uninformed persons,
and stick in their memory as far as in me lay'. It is a fairly simple
and straightforward ballad, most of it devoted to the history of
the schism, with a refrain at the end of each verse. 'All who rejoice
in peace now judge the truth.' It is written in a rough jingle, 'so
that needs of metre should not force me to use any words unfamiliar
to the vulgar'. Often doctrinal propaganda was not on so high a
level as this, but consisted of simple slogans. Even the most
ignorant monophysite could proclaim his faith by adding to the
DOCTRINAL CONTROVERSIES
Trisagion the words 'who was crucified for us', and the chanting
of the refrain provoked many bloody riots. so
It has often been argued that the passions ostensibly evoked by
doctrinal controversies were in reality the expression of national
sentiment or of social movements. Such theories are scarcely
susceptible of proof or of refutation but they are plausible in a
very limited number of cases only. It is likely that the Germanic
tribes clung to Arianism rather because it was their tribal cult,
than from any intellectual conviction of its truth. Theoderic's
tolerant policy in Italy seems to have been based on the idea that
the Goths and the Romans should live together in peace and mutual
respect, but that each should keep to their own function and
preserve their separate institutions and faiths. The doubtless
apocryphal story that he executed a catholic deacon for conversion
to Arianism suggests that this at any rate was the popular im-
pression produced by his policy.61
Other Arian kings, however, did not regard their faith as the
exclusive national religion of their tribesmen, but endeavoured to
force it on their Roman subjects; and it is hard to see what motive
they had, save a fanatical conviction that catholicism was a heresy
displeasing to God. The Germans certainly believed that their
doctrine was, and could be demonstrated to be, correct: the Vandal
king Huneric staged a set debate between his clergy and the
Catholics. Sidonius Apollinaris makes an interesting remark about
the Visigothic king Euric, so fanatical a persecutor that 'one might
doubt whether he is the leader of his tribe or of his sect'. 'His
mistake is,' says Sidonius, 'that he believes that success is vouch-
safed to him in his plans and policies in virtue of his religion,
whereas really he obtains it in virtue of earthly good fortune.'
In other words Euric believed that God rewarded him with
victory for his zeal in suppressing the heresy of his Roman
subjects.6
2
Apart from the Germans there are only four areas where national
sentiment can be plausibly alleged as the basis for heresy or
schism, Africa, Egypt, Syria and Armenia. The Donatists were
confined to Africa. They frequently challenged the right of the
imperial government to interfere in religious affairs and resisted
its agents by armed violence. They gave their support to the two
African pretenders, Firmus and Gildo, and some of them are
alleged by Augustine in 417 to have compromised with Arianism
in an attempt 'to conciliate the Goths, since they have some power'.
The reference is probably to the federate troops under the command
of the tribune Boniface, who later married an Arian wife and
allowed his daughter to receive an Arian baptism, doubtless with
RELIGION AND MORALS
the same end in view. Finally the Donatists drew their main
support from the Punic or Berber speaking population.
These are the facts, and they hardly justify the assertion that
Donatism was essentially an expression of African national feeling.
Donatism was in fact confined to Africa, but its adherents upheld
that they were the one surviving fragment of the catholic church,
which had elsewhere gone astray: it is significant that they .for long
maintained a bishop in Rome. That they were frequently in revolt
against the imperial government was because the government
usually persecuted them: they were perfectly willing to co-operate
with Julian, who granted them toleration, and with such pro-
consuls and vicars as favoured their cause. Their adherence to
local pretenders who promised them support was in the circum-
stances perfectly natural; Firm us and Gildo were not national
leaders, but pretenders to the imperial throne, and in backing them
the Donatists were hoping for an imperial sovernment in
with their church. Nor was there anything treasonable in the1r
ingratiating themselves with the federates operating in the area.
There is no evidence that they welcomed or supported the Vandals.
Nor is there anything very significant in the adherence of the
Punic and Berber speaking population to the Donatist cause. Any
church which included the peasant masses was bound to have a
majority of them, and . the no pride in .the
Their leaders were Latin speaking, thetr hterature was in Latin,
and so are the inscriptions even of the country churches.
63
The Africans never, so far as we know, possessed any national
sentiment. The Egyptians in times past had cherished their
national traditions. Under the later Ptolemies there had been serious
native revolts and native Pharaohs had established their rule over
parts of the c;untry for considerable periods. Even under Roman
rule there was in the reign of Marcus Aurelius a formidable popular
uprising in the Delta which may well. have by
nationalism. One of its leaders was a pr1est, and lt 1s certain that
the 'Prophecy of the Potter', a strongly xenophobic document
which foretold the destruction of the foreign city of Alexandria,
was in circulation at this period and even later. There is, however,
no sign that Egyptian nationalism survived the third century, and
it is likely to have died with the old Egyptian religion, with which
it was closely linked. Certainly there was from the fourth century
onwards no hostility to Alexandria, which became on the contrary
the acknowledged spiritual centre of Egypt.64
The Egyptians undoubtedly showed great solidarity in the
doctrinal conflicts of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. They
stubbornly maintained their loyalty to the homoousion throughout
the prolonged controversy which followed the Council of Nicaea,
and they were as united and as intransigent in the monophysite
cause after Cha!cedon. They fiercely resisted the attempts of the
imperial government to impose upon them bishops whom they
considered to be heretical, but this does not seem to have involved
any hostility to the empire as such. There were no attempts at
political rebellion, and in periods when the imperial doctrine
coincided with their own they were perfectly content.
65
Egyptian doctrinal solidarity seems to be the result of the
immense /restige of the Alexandrian church, and the highly
centralise organisation of the patriarchate. The people of Egypt
took great pride in the high repute of Alexandria for theological
learning, and had very little opportunity of hearing other views.
They were in turn homoousians and monophysites partly becau.se
they had been taught no other doctrine, but mainly because these
were the faiths of their great popes Alexander and Athanasius,
Cyril and Dioscorus. It was probably for this reason that they
obstinately refused any compromise which did not expressly
anathematise Chalcedon, the council which had condemned
Dioscorus.
Egyptian hostility to the doctrine of Chalcedon was probably
enhanced by the fact that the council had given primacy in the East
to Constantinople, the upstart see whose pretentious the patriar-
chate of Alexandria had always resented and often successfully
crushed. It was doubtless for similar reasons that monophysitism
was strong at Ephesus, whose bishop the Council of Chalcedon
had deposed and whose see it had robbed of its quasi-patriarchal
status and subjected to Constantinople. 56
Monophysitism became by accident the national faith of the
Armenians in much the same way as Arianism became that of the
German tribes. The Armenian kingdom had been early converted
to Christianity and had created what may truly be called a national
church. In the middle decades of the fifth century the Armenians
were involved in a struggle with their Persian overlords, who
were endeavouring to impose Zoroastrianism upon them, and
took no part in the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. As late
as 5 o6 they were unaware of the issues involved, and learned of
them only from monophysite refugees from Mesopotamia, where
the Persian government supported the Nestorians. The Armenians
naturally accepted the views of their fellow victims. They con-
demned Nestorius and Chalcedon and approved 'the letter of Zeno,
blessed emperor of the Romans', that is, the Henoticon, which was
at that time the official orthodoxy of the empire. When Justin and
Justinian reversed the imperial attitude, the Armenians were
RELIGION AND MORALS
apparently not consulted and clung to their old faith. They
remained friendly with Rome and solicited and obtained her aid
against the Persians, but steadfastly refused to change the doctrine
to which they were traditionally attached.
67
Outside Egypt and Armenia monophysitism ultimately survived
only in Syria and Mesopotamia. It cannot, however, be called
the national faith of those areas. There was always a large body
of Chalcedonians in Syria, and of Nestorians in Persian Meso-
potamia. Moreover in the late fifth and sixth centuries mono-
physitism had a considerable following in other parts of the
Eastern empire. For the first few decades after Chalcedon Palestine
was strongly monophysite; the monks denounced the traitor
Juvenal, who had signed the Chalcedonian creed, and set up a
rival patriarch in his place. At Thessalonica the papal com-
missioners who came in 519 to receive the bishop into communion
were greeted by riots; shortly before z,ooo citizens had crowded
to be baptised before the monophysite faith was abandoned.
In Justinian's reign the great monophysite leader James Baradaeus
in his many journeys visited Cappadocia, Cilicia, Isauria, Pamphylia,
Lycaonia, Phrygia, Lycia, Caria, Asia, Cyprus and the islands of
the Aegean. Of the twenty-nine sees to which he consecrated
bishops thirteen were in Egypt, seven in Syria and Mesopotamia,
and nine in Asia Minor. John of Ephesus mentions monophysite
communities in many cities of Asia Minor, and notes in particular
the flourishing churches of Pamphylia. 68
It would seem in fact as if for a century and more after Chalcedon
monophysitism was as widely diffused, and in as haphazard a
fashion, as had been Arianism. It was perhaps stronger in Syria;
but it survived there and died elsewhere, because in Syria it
enjoyed toleration under the Arabs and in Asia Minor it eventually
succumbed to persecution.
The linguistic question is relevant neither in Egypt nor in Syria
and Mesopotamia. In Egypt translations of the scriptures into
Coptic were made in the fourth century, if not earlier, for the
benefit of the masses who knew no Greek, and much theological
and hagiographical literature was translated long before the
Egyptian church went into permanent schism. Greek on the other
hand was the language of educated Christians, whether orthodox
or monophysite. It was only when Greek died out after the Arab
conquest that Coptic became the exclusive language of the national
monophysite church, while the orthodox patriarchate of Alexan-
dria, which was virtually a foreign mission from Constantinople,
naturally used Greek.
In the Antiochene patriarchate the position was somewhat
different, since Syriac not only was the language of the people in
Syria and Palestine, but in Mesopotamia remained in continuous
use as a literary language. It was used by Christian writers of all
persuasions in Mesopotamia from the third century onwards. In
Syria and Palestine the liturgy or at least parts of it were translated
into Syriac for the benefit of humble folk as early as the third
century, but Christian literature, whether orthodoxormonophysite,
was written in Greek. Here again Greek died out after the Arab
conquest, and Syriac became the exclusive language of the local
monophysite church, with the result that the works of the great
monophysite leaders of the sixth century, originally written in
Greek, survive only in Syriac translations. Here too the orthodox
patriarchate became a virtual dependency of Constantinople and
therefore maintained the use of Greek.
The only religious conflict which can be associated with a social
struggle is the Donatist controversy. According to Optatus the
circumcellion bands in the middle of the fourth century established
a reign of terror over the propertied classes. 'No one could be
safe on his estates: the bonds of debtors lost their force, no creditor
at that time could recover his money.' Rich men travelling through
the country were hustled out of their chariots and compelled to
run behind while their slaves drove. Augustine brings similar
charges against the circumcellions. Peasants were encouraged to
defy their landlords, and slaves not only to desert but to menace
their masters. 'What owner was not compelled to fear his own
slave if he resorted to their patronage? Who could exact payment
from those who consumed his stores or from his debtors, if they
appealed for their aid and defence? Under the terror of clubs and
fire and instant death the accounts of the worst slaves were des-
troyed so that they could escape to freedom. The bonds of debtors
were extorted and given back to them.'
6
9
It is likely enough that the peasants who formed the circumcel-
lion bands were glad to take advantage of the religious struggle to
intimidate and beat up landlords and moneylenders who happened
to be catholics and to champion their fellow sectaries against them.
But these incidents were only part of a wider campaign of terrorism,
in which the principal incidents were the seizure of catholic
churches and the kidnapping and maltreatment of catholic clergy.
There is no evidence that landlords in general were attacked.
There were plenty of Donatist landowners, who would. hardly
have remained faithful to the cause if they had been subject to such
treatment. And there is evidence that catholic landowners were
not molested if they allowed their tenants freedom of worship.
Augustine in a fulsome letter to the great senator Pammachius
RELIGION AND MORALS
congratulates him on his courage in urging his tenants in the
Donatist stronghold of Numidia to join the catholic church, and
expresses the wish that other senators may be encouraged to do the
same. Evidently their Donatist tenants were quietly paying their
rents to these Italian senators and would only cause trouble if
their religion were interfered with.
70

In all religious conflicts the upper classes tended for prudenual
motives to conform to government policy. They had more to lose
by opposition: they were more likely to be denounced, their
property might be confiscated, they might lose their posts. The
lower classes were more stubborn; flogging and torture were
familiar incidents to them, and had not the same terror as they had
for their social superiors. In the persecutions the vast majority of
upper-class Christians seem to have lapsed; the martyrs and con-
fessors were mostly men of humble station. The same seems to
have been true when the empire became Christian and persecution
was turned against the dissidents. Hence in most heretical sects
the majority tended to be humble people. Only among the Dona-
tists, so far as we know, did this circumstance give to a religious
struggle some features of a class war. In general, it would seem,
the religious struggles of the later empire were in reality what they
appeared to be. Their bitterness demonstrates the overwhelming
importance of religion in the minds of all sorts and conditions of
men.
It is even more difficult to generalise about morals than about
religion. It is possible to record the ideals set forth by philosophers
and theologians, and to describe the precepts of moralists and
preachers. It is much more difficult to assess the codes of behaviour
which ordinary men in various walks of life accepted as binding
upon them, and next to impossible to estimate how far men lived
up to these codes.
There was much in common between the moral ideals preached
by pagan philosophers and Christian theologians. Both alike
proclaimed the equality of men, by the law of nature and in the
sight of God respectively. The philosophers were as insistent on
love of one's fellow men (<ptAavOewnta) as Christians of love of one's
neighbour. The pagan Libanius regarded forgiveness of one's
enemies as a divine and typically Athenian virtue. Both philoso-
phers and divines preached contempt for wealth and power, both
alike advocated temperance and chastity. There were, however,
differences in emphasis in the pagan and Christian ideals. The
philosophers taught that wealth was indifferent, and that its loss
I
h
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN MORALS 971
should be borne with equanimity: Christians preaclred that riches
were a positive hindrance to salvation, and the better way was to
away all one's to poor. held marriage
111 high esteem. Chnstlans set up celibacy and v1rg1111ty as the ideal,
and gave only a grudging approval to marriage as a concession to
weaker vessels. n
In their practical precepts there was also much in common between
paganism and Christianity. Despite their common belief in the
equality of men both accepted slavery as a matter of course, and
contented themselves with urging slaves to be obedient and dutiful,
and masters to be kind. But once again there were differences of
emphasis. Liberality was part of the pagan code. The rich were
expected to spend their money lavishly for the benefit of their
fellow citizens, subscribing to public buildings, maintaining the
gymnasia and baths, buying corn for distribution at a fair price in
time of famine, and above all providing games and other enter-
tainments. The standard of generosity expected was high, and
there were men who reduced themselves to poverty by their
benefactions. This kind of liberality reached its apogee in the
second century A.D. but the spirit survived in pagan circles down
to the end of the fourth century at any rate: Libanius' letters are
full of the praises of wealthy pagans who have impoverished
themselves in the service of their cities. 7
2
The church frowned on such forms of liberality. The principal
object to which it was devoted, the games, were in its view sinful,
and the motive was vainglory. 'It is prodigality', declares Ambrose
'to exhaust one's own fortune for the sake of popularity, as do
those who squander their patrimony on giving horse races or
even theatrical entertainments and gladiatorial shows and wild
beast hunts in order to outshine the productions of their predeces-
sors.'73
On the other hand, the church laid an immense emphasis on
charity to the poor, and particularly to widows, orphans, strangers,
and the sick. The poor were not altogether neglected in the pagan
code, as the alimentary benefactions of the second century testify,
but the Christians set a new standard. The best wituess to their
generosity is Julian, who allocated an annual grant of 3o,ooo modii
of wheat and 6o,ooo sestarii of wine to his pagan high priest of
Galatia, and instructed him: 'A fifth of this sum is to be spent on
the poor who serve the priests, and the rest distributed by us to
strangers and beggars. For it is a disgrace that no Jew is a beggar,
and the impious Galilaeans feed our people in addition to their
own, whereas ours manifestly lack assistance from us. Teach the
pagans also to subscribe to such services, and the pagan villages
GG
to offer first fruits to the gods, and accustom the pagans to benefi-
cence of this kind.'74
Christian charity was not limited to almsgiving to the poor.
Christians built churches, and maintained and endowed their
clergy, and supported thousands of monks. The duty extended to
a much wider social circle than did pagan liberality; even the
humblest were urged to contribute their mite. On the whole it is
probable, though no figures can be adduced, that more people
gave away a larger proportion of their wealth in Christian than in
pagan society: otherwise the rapid growth of the immense wealth
of the churches is unaccountable. Many motives contributed to
the strength of the movement. Vainglory no doubt played its part,
particularly in the erection of churches-as in pagan times bene-
factors were far more willing to put up a new building which would
commemorate their name than to make provision for repairs.
But the most cogent motive was the desire to save one's soul,
for the church taught that almsgiving, together with prayer and
fasting, won remission for sin. In particular this motive accounts
for the flood of testamentary bequests to the church.
75
In sexual relations the teaching of the church was more exacting
than the pagan code. Both the Christian and the Greco-Roman
moral code condemned homosexuality: Libanius is as passionate
in denouncing the vice, which was apparently very prevalent at
Antioch, as is his contemporary John Chrysostom. It may be
suspected, however, that average pagan opinion was more lax
than Christian. Both alike abhorred incest, but there were areas
of the empire where marriages between close kin were normal
and approved. In Egypt brother and sister marriage was traditional
and commonly practised at any rate down to the early third
century A.D. It was tolerated by the Roman government, being
forbidden only to Roman citizens, presumably Egyptians who had
received the citizenship. After the Constitutio Antoniniana the
Roman rules against incest should have been universally enforced,
but apparently they were not. Diocletian was shocked to find
that owing to ignorance of the law many of his subjects were
contracting incestuous unions, and in a constitution redolent of
religious emotion peremptorily prohibited practices so beastly
and so offensive to the immortal gods. In Egypt, whether under
the pressure of Roman law or of Christian teaching, brother and
sister marriages seem to have ceased by the fourth century. Among
the rural population of Osrhoene and Mesopotamia incestuous
marriages were still common in the sixth century, even among the
clergy: Justinian, after ordering an investigation, had to condone
past offences.
76
Since the reign of Augustus adultery, that is intercourse between
married woman and anyone but her husband, and stuprum,
Intercourse between a man and any free woman other than his
wife, or a registered prostitute, had been criminal offences, visited
by severe penalties on both parties. Breaches of chastity by women
were strongly condemned by public opinion. The offences of men
have been more lightly but the lawyers held that
1n trymg a case of adultery the judge should enquire whether the
husband led a chaste life: for it was 'most inequitable that a husband
should exact chastity from his wife, when he does not practise it
himself'. Divorce on the other hand was permissible under
Roman law at the wish of either party, and the husband might
remarry forthwith, the wife after a year's delay. Though there
were probably not many who went as far as the couple cited by
Jerome, who had each had twenty-two previous spouses, divorce
seems to have been on the other hand scores of pagan
tombstones record w1th pnde long and happy marriages. Concu-
binage, a regular union between an unmarried man and a slave or
freedwoman, was recognised by law and regarded as perfectly
respectable. Prostitution was also recognised by law, and, while
brothel keepers and prostitutes were despised as a degraded class,
recourse to them was not condemned by public opinion. 77
The standards taught by the church were much more rigorous.
All intercourse outside marriage was declared sinful, though there
was some hesitation about concubinage. Augustine declared
uncompromisingly against it, but his attitude apparently evoked
surprise and indignation from his flock, and the Council of Toledo
in 400 ruled that an unmarried man might have one concubine
conforming t'? classical law. It was generally agreed
d1vorce was perm1ss1ble only for adultery, but Augustine by a
rather casuistical argument equated idolatry with adultery, and
avarice with idolatry, and concluded that any grave sin justified
divorce. On tJ:lC: guestion persons might remarry
was a d!V!SlOJ?- of opm1on. Ongen states that some bishops
1n his day allowed lt, and though he thought them wrong he did
not presume to condemn them. The Council of Aries in 3 14
evidently disapproved of it, advising young men who had divorced
adulterous wives to refrain from a second marriage if possible.
Epiphanius at the end of the fourth century considered remarriage
after a lawful divorce, for adultery or other grave sin, quite normal.
Augustine, after prolonged thought, decided that it was forbidden,
and so advised his flock. But he admitted that the texts were very
obscure, and therefore regarded the second marriage of divorced
persons as a venial sin. An African council in 407 subjected to
Jl
i
974
RELIGION AND MORALS
penance all husbands or wives who had been divorced by their
spouses if they subsequently remarried. A Gallic council in 465
excommunicated husbands who married again if they had divorced
their first wives for reasons other than adultery. But on one point
all Christians were agreed, that marriage was indissoluble except
for adultery.
78
The Christian emperors tightened up the laws of divorce, but
not in an entirely Christian sense. Constantine enacted that a
woman might legitimately divorce her husband only if he were
a murderer, poisoner or tomb robber. If she did so for any other
cause, such as drunkenness, gambling or sexual offences, she lost
her dowry and was deported. A man might divorce his wife for
adultery, poisoning or procuring, and if he did so for other reasons
had to restore her dowry and was debarred from a second marriage.
It may be noted that the illegitimate divorce, though the guilty
party was penalised, was valid, so that the divorced party could
remarry. Honorius in 42 I reformed the law, distinguishing three
kinds of divorce, that for a crime, that for bad character and that
without reasons alleged. In divorces of the first class a wife, if
she proved her case, recovered her dowry and was allowed to
remarry after five years; a husband could remarry forthwith.
In those of the second class a man who divorced was allowed to
marry again after two years but a woman was debarred from
remarriage. In those of the third class the penalties were the
same as under Constantine's law, deportation for a woman, celibacy
for a man.
79
Since divorce under the old legal forms had been rendered so
difficult, many couples dissolved their marriage by consent. This
was forbidden by Theodosius II in 439, but he at the same time
abolished all the penalties for divorce, and went back to the
classical law. His constitution was received in the West in 448,
but Valentinian III four years later revoked it, going back to the
law of 421. Theodosius II also had second thoughts in 449 He
allowed divorce for a long list of crimes, ranging from treason to
stealing cattle, and for various marital offences, such as, in the
case of a man, wife beating or introducing loose women into the
home, and in the case of a woman, going to the games or the
theatre or spending a night away without her husband's leave.
A man who divorced his wife in these circumstances could marry
again forthwith; a woman kept her dowry and could remarry
after a year. But divorces without due cause remained valid; a
woman who thus divorced her husband was not allowed to marry
again within five years, a man merely forfeited the dowry. As a
result of this law the dissolution of marriages by consent re-
appeared: the law of 439 was apparently evaded by one party
sending. t h ~ other a formal docume?t _of divorce (repudium).
Anastasms m 497 cleared up an ambigUity by ruling that if a
husband divorced his wife with her consent, she did not have to
wait five years but might remarry after the year laid down by the
classical law.
80
Justinian l;o&islated extensive!);' on marriage, revising in various
ways the legitimate causes of divorce. In 542 he made a drastic
change. He prohibited divorce by consent, and ordered that a
woman who divorced her husband without cause should be placed
in a nunnery for life. Under this law a husband in like case suffered
only pecuniary damages, but in 5 48 he too was relegated to a
monastery. The prohibition of divorce by consent caused much
discontent, and within a year of its author's death, Justin II be-
sieged by petitions from couples who, though they had no la'wful
cause o ~ divorce, found married life intolerable, regretfully
revoked lt. We possess the contract of divorce of an Egyptian
couple who took advantage of Justin II's law three years later.
Aurelius Theodore, a baker, and Aurelia Amaresia, daughter of a
merchant, both of Antinoopolis, declare: 'We were in time past
joined to one another in marriage and community of life in fair
hopes and with a view to the procreation of legitimate children,
thinking to maintain a peaceful and seemly married life with one
another for the whole time of our joint lives; but on the contrary
we have suffered from a sinister and wicked demon which attacked
us unexpectedly from we know not whence, with a view to our
being separated from one another.' After which they get down to
business details, abandoning all reciprocal claims and specifying
that either party may make a second marriage. 81
This record of legislation shows how impotent was the church
to change accepted moral standards even on a matter on which it
felt so strongly as the sanctity of marriage. Constantine and his
successors in making divorce more difficult were evidently
actuated by Christian ideals, and were probably subjected to
clerical pressure: the African council which in 407 prohibited
the remarriage of all persons who had been divorced resolved to
petition the emperor for an imperial law to that effect. But the
imperial government never ventured to impose any such general
ban, and on the whole tended to relax the drastic rules against
divorce enacted by Cons tan tine: even Justinian allowed remarriage
after divorce for a wide range of causes. But the most significant
fact is the survival of divorce by consent throughout the three
centuries which followed Constantine's law. It was apparently
despite the church's teaching quite common among Christians.
RELIGION AND MORALS
Asterius of Amaseia in one of his sermons castigates his congrega-
tion 'who change your wives like your clothes, and build new
bride chambers as often and as casually as stalls at a fair'. 82
The church's condemnation of fornication had rather more
effect, if not in ditninishing it, at any rate in rescuing prostitutes.
Constantine, it is true, took prostitution for granted and levied
the collatio lustralis from it as from other trades: he moreover
assimilated barmaids to prostitutes, ruling that they should be
neither subject to the penalties of the Lex Julia de adulteriis nor
protected by it. It was not until the fifth century that any legislation
was introduced against prostitution, and it was apparently due to
the initiative of a pious layman, Florentius, twice praetorian
prefect of the East. In 428 he inspired a law authorising prostitutes
who wished to abandon their trade to appeal to bishops, provincial
governors or defensores of cities, and empowering these authorities
to free them from their fathers or owners or employers. In 43 9
he secured the issue of a constitution freeing all prostitutes in
Constantinople and expelling brothel keepers from the city; he
recompensed the treasury for the resulting loss of revenue out of
his own fortune. It was evidently by this time felt to be a scandal
that a Christian government should draw profit from immorality,
and twenty or thirty years later Leo enacted a general prohibition
of prostitution and abolished the tax upon it. 83
Needless to say the prohibition was ineffective. In 5 29 Theodora
made a vigorous attack on the problem in the capital. She made
the brothel keepers declare on oath how much they had paid for
their girls, and having established that five solidi was the average
price, bought up all the prostitutes and put them in a former
imperial palace, which she converted into the Convent of Repen-
tance; according to the malicious Procopius many of the girls
found their new life so depressing that they flung themselves out
of the windows. Six years later Justinian received private in-
formation, which was verified by an enquiry conducted by the
praetors, that prostitution was again rampant in the capital. In a
constitution which he issued as a result of this enquiry he gives
some details of the trade. Agents toured the provinces and allured
girls, sometimes younger than ten years of age, into their clutches
by offering them fine clothes and shoes: once in the city they were
made to sign contracts and provide sureties for their observance,
or kept imprisoned in brothels. 84
To turn to a tninor issue, the church viewed the baths with
displeasure. Mixed bathing it naturally condemned as an incite-
ment to sin, but it also disapproved of bathing in general. 'He who
has once been bathed in Christ has no need of a second bath', wrote
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN MORALS
977
J erome. Augustine allowed nuns to go to the baths onlyonceamonth,
unless by doctor's orders. Pious Christians had doubts even about
this. The Palestinian hertnit Barsenuphius was asked: 'Since I am
ill, and my doctor has ordered me to take baths, is it a sin?' He
replied: 'Bathing is not absolutely forbidden to a man in the world,
when need demands. So if you are ill and need it, it is not a sin.
But if a man is healthy, it cossets and relaxes his body and conduces
to lust.' In this sphere the church's censure was utterly ignored
save by a puritanical minority. The baths remained a great social
institution among rich and poor alike. Even the clergy did not
always conform to the church's teaching; bishop Sisinnius, it will
be remembered, shocked his Novatian congregation by bathing
twice a day.
85
Christian writers consistently and unanimously condemn the
games in all their forms. They had a special objection to gladia-
torial shows and wild beast hunts as being organised murder.
They had an even stronger objection to theatrical displays, both
because they enacted pagan myths and because they were normally
suggestive and indecent. But all games, including chariot races,
came under the church's condemnation as being frivolous dis-
tractions and because they were by origin celebrated in honour of
pagan gods and were still associated with pagan festivals. Not
only actors and actresses but charioteers were refused baptism
unless they renounced their profession and excommunicated if
they resumed it. 86
Here the church secured one victory. Constanrine prohibited
gladiatorial shows in 3 26, and in the Eastern parts, where they
were a Roman importation and had never been very common,
the law seems to have been effective. Libanius in his autobiography
recalls with nostalgic melancholy 'those single combats in which
fell or conquered men who, one could say, were disciples of the
three hundred at Thermopylae': though he did not watch the
show and was sickened by the sight of blood, he could not as a
good pagan condemn gladiators. He is speaking of the Antiochene
Olympia of 328 and implies that he had seen none since. In the
West gladiatorial games continued until the reign of Honorius,
when an Eastern hertnit, Telemachus, sacrificed his life to stop
them, leaping into the arena and thrusting himself between the
contestants. Wild beast hunts, however, which tnight be just as
murderous, went on; the puritanical and econotnical Anastasius
banned them in 499, but they were soon revived.
87
Anastasius also banned the tnime a few years later, with equal
lack of success. One form of theatrical entertainment, the maiuma,
which Christian opinion particularly condemned for its licentious
RELIGION AND MORALS
character, was occasionally prohibited by the imperial government,
but never, it would seem, for long. In 396 Arcadius conceded 'that
the pleasure of the maiuma should be restored to the provincials, on
condition that decency is preserved and modesty is maintained
with chaste morals'. Three years later he felt obliged to prohibit
'the filthy and indecent spectacle of the maiuma'; but Justinian's
Code preserves only the former law. ss
The evidence is overwhelming that Christians of all classes from
the richest to the poorest took a passionate interest in all forms of
games, wild beast hunts, the mime and the maiuma, and above all
chariot races. Not even all the clergy were resolute against them.
When, in about 430, Leontius the prefect announced that he was
going to revive the Olympia in the theatre of Chalcedon, a local
abbot, Hypatius, raised the cry of idolatry-though he had no idea
what happened at the Olympia-and asked Eulalius the bishop of
Chalcedon to protest. But Eulalius told Hypatius to mind his own
business.
89
In the de Gubernatione Dei Salvian denounces his Christian
contemporaries on three main counts, the laxity of their sexual
morals, their passionate addiction to the games, and their heartless
oppression of the poor. The first two charges seem to be justified,
the last is borne out by much factual and detailed evidence in the
Codes and in the canons of the councils, in the letters of laymen
and ecclesiastics, in the speeches of Libanius and the sermons of
bishops, in the biographies of saints and in the papyri. There
were many good Christians who were charitable to the poor, but
many more who abused their wealth and position to exploit their
necessities, lending them money at usurious rates of interest,
enslaving them when they were starving, juggling with the assess-
ments to throw on them more than their due of taxation, extorting
from them extra perquisites beyond their lawful rent and cheating
them by the use of false measures. It is difficult to assess whether
in these matters the general level of morals was lower than it had
been under the pagan empire, but it seems to have been no higher.
Pliny the younger reveals himself in his letters as a more considerate
landlord than were the rectors of the patrimony of St. Peter under
Gregory the Great.
In some aspects of morals it is possible to trace a decline. The
Codes give a very strong impression that brutality increased.
In dealing with slaves, and from the middle of the second century
onward the lower orders generally, the Roman administration had
always been brutal. Torture was freely used to obtain evidence
and extract confessions, flogging was arbitrarily inflicted, and the
penalties for crime were often savage. Under the Christian
THE CHURCH'S FAILURE
979
emperors flogging and torture seem to have been used more and
more as a matter of course, and were extended to classes hitherto
exempt from them. Savage penalties, such as burning allve, were
applied to a wider range of offences by successive emperors.
Official extortion and oppression and judicial corruption seem
also to have increased. The Roman administration had never been
free of these evils, but there was certainly a marked decline, which
appears to be progressive, from the relatively high standards
attained in the second and early third centuries. A definite decline
in public morality can be traced in the sale of offices, which from
being an exceptional abuse became a standard practice. It lay at
the root of extortion and corruption, which concurrently became
accepted as normal.
It is strange that during a period when Christianity, from being
the religion of a small minority, came to embrace practically all
the citizens of the empire, the general standards of conduct should
have remained in general static and in some respects have sunk.
If the moral code taught by the church was not notably higher
than that of pagan philosophy, it was preached with far more
vigour to a far wider audience, and was backed by the sanction
of eternal punishment in the next world. In all the churches of
the empire Christians received regular exhortation in sermons;
there was a flood of homiletical literature; and sinners were dis-
ciplined by penance and excommunication.
One reason for the church's failure may have been that it set its
standards too high, and insisted too strongly that any majorlapseen-
tailed eternal damnation. It had built up its code when it was a small
exclusive society of the elect. When after the Peace of the Church
it became mingled with the world, its demands became intolerable.
This is the main explanation of the tremendous appeal made by
the eremitic and monastic life. Some Christians sought the solitude
of the desert to achieve a higher spiritual life. They yearned by
mortifying the flesh and devoting their whole life to the study of the
scriptures, meditation and prayer to obtain an intimate mystical
knowledge of God. There survives a large body of devotional
literature which gives psychological guidance to such aspirants.
The vast majority of monks and hermits, however, had a simpler
and lowlier ambition, to shun the distractions and temptations of
the world and thus to make it possible for themselves to escape
eternal damnation.
In one passage John Chrysostom affirms that it is perfectly
RELIGION AND MORALS
possible for a Christian to live an ordinary life and save his soul.
'Where now are those who say that it is impossible for a man to
preserve his virtue living in the midst of a city, and that with-
drawal and life in the mountains is essential, and that a man who is
head of a household and has a wife and looks after his children
and slaves cannot be virtuous?' He hastily adds, 'not that I
discourage withdrawal from cities or forbid life in the mountains
and deserts', and his general tone is very different. He stresses
the temptations and distractions of secular life and paints an
idyllic picture of the peace and quiet enjoyed by the monks. The
cities, he declares, are so evil 'that those who wish to be saved are
forced to seek the desert' and he urges all his flock not only to send
their sons to the desert but to go there themselves en masse. John
is exceptionally enthusiastic on this theme, but most Christian
writers advocate the monastic life not as a special vocation for the
spiritually minded but as a means of salvation for the ordinary
men and women. When the emperor Maurice forbade serving
soldiers and officials indebted to the treasury to enter monasteries,
Pope Gregory could scarcely bring himself to execute this decree.
'I am terribly frightened by this constitution, I confess to your
majesty, for by it the way to heaven is closed to many, and what
has hitherto been lawful is now prohibited. For there are many
who can live a religious life even in secular garb. And there are
some who unless they leave everything can in no way be saved
before God.'90
Countless earnest Christians, who despaired of saving their
souls in the world, flocked to the deserts or crowded into monas-
teries. Many others, who had the means to do so, lived austere
and secluded lives of prayer and meditation within their own homes,
as did the noble ladies with whom Jerome corresponded. The
great majority of ordinary Christians, who had their families to
keep and their livings to earn, and could not bring themselves to
make the great renunciation, placed their hopes of salvation in
the sacrament of baptism, which washed away all sin.
This is the explanation of the apparently common practice of
postponing baptism to the last minute. This habit is denounced in
sermons and pamphlets by Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus
and Gregory of Nyssa. There were no doubt, as these authors say,
cynics who wished to indulge themselves and then to win salvation
by a deathbed baptism. But there were probably more who were
afraid th.at they would not be able to keep to the straight and narrow
path, and preferred to be on the safe side. 9
1
Late baptism was apparently by this time generallv considered
to be wrong, since offenders alleged specious excuses, such as a
desire to be baptised in Jordan. It is very difficult to estimate how
common the practice was. Infant baptism was already common in
the early third century, and children in Christian families were no
doubt generally baptised early owing to parental anxiety for their
salvation. But down to the end of the fourth century we know of a
number of pious Christians who postponed their baptism till late
in life. The case of Constantine is well known. It is more remark-
able that his son, Constantius II, who was brought up as a Christian
and was morbidly pious, was not baptised until shortly before his
death. Theodosius I, a convinced Christian from a Christian family,
was in his middle thirties when he received baptism, and only
received it then because he was seriously ill. Ambrose was still a
catechumen, though he came of a very pious family, when he was
elected bishop of Milan, and his brother Satyrus was baptised only
shortly before his death. An inscription records that Junius Bassus,
who died during his prefecture of the city at the age of forty-two,
'went to God a neophyte'. Another inscription commemorates a
humbler Roman, a man of exemplary virtues, who died a neophyte
at the same age in 396.
92
In the fifth century we hear no more of late baptisms. Infant
baptism was probably by now normal for children of Christian
parentage, though there were local variations of practice. Za-
charias of Mitylene explains that Severus was still a catechumen
when he went to Alexandria as a student, because it was the custom
in his country, Pisidia, not to baptise until the beard began to grow.
But it is significant that Zacharias thought Severus' case required
explanation; and even in Pisidia youths received baptism before
they embarked on the hazards of adult life.
93
A baptised Christian who fell into serious sin had a second c h ~ r : c e
in the sacrament of penance. In the Western church the pwrutwe
rigours of penance were maintained down to the sixth century.
It was a humiliating and exacting process. Penitents had to wear a
distinctive garb and stand or kneel in special parts of the church.
They were excluded from the eucharist, and had to perform extra
fasts and to refrain from carnal pleasures. All this they might
have to do for as much as ten or twelve years, in the case of the
worst sins, before they were reconciled. Many people naturally
shrank from the ordeal, but there were other reasons for deferring
penance as long as possible. It was granted once and once for all.
There was no assurance of forgiveness if one sinned after penance,
and to avoid the risk of sin the church imposed a severe discipline
on penitents for the rest of their lives. They might not marry
and must observe continence if already married: Pope Leo conceded
with some hesitation that a young man who had received penance
RELIGION AND MORALS
owing to fear of death might be excused if he subsequently married
to avoid the greater sin of fornication. They might not engage in
trade, nor practise at the bar nor serve in the army or the civil
service. To the ordinary man, with his living to earn and his family
to keep, penance was impracticable until he could retire on his
savings, and most people preferred to postpone it until their
deathbeds, when the church would take their intention on trust
and give them absolution-though if they recovered they had to
undergo the full rigours. Preachers like Augustine or Caesarius
deprecated postponing penance until the very last moment, but it is
clear that the latter at any rate did not expect it to be undertaken
except by the elderly.94
Owing to the very exacting standards demanded by the church,
especially in sexual morals, many Christians despaired of leading a
sinless life. In the fourth century many, if they had not been
baptised in childhood, remained catechumens all their days, relying
on a last minute baptism to secure salvation. In the fifth and sixth
centuries, when most people were baptised in infancy or at any rate
as adolescents, they relied on deathbed penance. In these circum-
stances many who started with the best intentions may have come
to feel that having sinned once or twice it did not matter if they
sinned again: the final result would be the same.
In the Eastern churches the primitive discipline of penance
seems to have been relaxed from the end of the fourth century.
The rot began, according to Socrates and Sozomen, when Nec-
tarius, bishop of Constantinople under Theodosius I, owing to a
scandal, abolished the penitentiary priest, whose office it had been
to hear confessions and order the appropriate penance. Henceforth
sinners were left to fix their own penance at their own discretion,
and it seems to have followed that penance, instead of being a
solemn rite enacted once for all, might be repeated as often as
required. The repetition of penance also crept in towards the
end of the sixth century in the West: it was severely condemned
as a pernicious innovation by the third Council of Toledo in 5 89.
But it may be questioned whether it was not a healthy development,
which enabled the average man to try again after lapses from
virtue.
95
The special decline in the civic virtues may be due to other
causes also. The churches during the first three centuries of their
existence had been societies consisting in the main of humble
persons, and had included few who exercised authority. The
moral teaching of the church had therefore naturally been directed
to the life of the ordinary man, and the code of ethics which it
developed was concerned with his problems. Pagan philosophers
down to the end of the fourth century produced countless works
on the virtues and duties of kings. Christian writers have nothing
to say on this topic, and but little on the duties of the citizen.
For the most part they are content to repeat a few texts inculcating
obedience to the authorities and payment of one's taxes.
In the second place the church had in its early days lived in
expectation of the second coming of Christ, and as this hope
faded had fixed its eyes on the life of the world to come. Christians
regarded themselves as sojourners on this earth and unconcerned
with its problems. Some regarded the itnperial government as
satanic, the majority accepted it as ordained of God, but all alike
viewed it as an external power alien to themselves.
It was difficult for Christians to adjust their ideas when under
Constantine the government became Christian, and they did so
only very slowly and with imperfect success. One can sense the
bewilderment of the bishops assembled at Arles in 314 in the
seventh canon which they enacted. 'About governors who being
of the faithful advance to a governorship, it was resolved that when
they are promoted they shall receive ecclesiastical letters of com-
munion with the reservation that wherever they administer, the
bishop of the place shall keep an eye on them, and when they
begin to act contrary to the rules of the church, then they shall be
excluded from communion.' The bishops evidently felt that the
imperial service was almost incompatible with membership of
the church, and that if a baptised Christian took a government
post he was highly suspect and only retained his membership
during good behaviour.9
6
The church had never had to face the moral problems of a
Christian placed in a position of secular authority, and on some
very elementary points it was still in doubt almost a century after
Constantine's conversion. The question was put to Ambrose
whether a Christian judge who passed a death sentence should be
excommunicated. He replied that he himself did not excommuni-
cate in such a case, but he clearly had qualms. 'You will be excused
if you do it, you will be praised if you do not . . . I know that
many often boast that they. brought back their axe
unstained with blood from a provmcial government. If pagans
do this what should Christians do?' The same question was put
to Innocent I: 'What about those who after baptism have
held administrative posts and have either merely applied torture
or have even pronounced a capital sentence?' Innocent replied
that there was no ancient rule, but that as 'these powers had been
granted by God and the sword permitted for the punish-
ment of the guilty', those who Wielded lt were not blameworthy.
97
RELIGION AND MORALS
The teachers of the church offered no inspiring advice to a Chris-
tian governor. They.urg.ed him not to oppress widows and orphans
and not to pervert JUStice, but beyond such somewhat negative
counsels they did not go. With regard to soldiers the attitude of
Christian teachers was similarly hesitant and negative. Even in
the fourth century some Christians held that Christianity was
incompatible with military service: Basil held that a soldier who
killed a man in the course of duty was guilty of murder and must
be excommunicated. This extreme view found little support,
but the church offered no positive message to soldiers: it was
content with reiterating the advice of John the Baptist that they
refrain from extortion and be content with their pay.9s
The church long maintained the suspicious attitude of the
Council of Aries to all forms of government service. An early
papal letter declares: 'It is manifest that those who have acquired
secular power and administered secular justice cannot be free from
sin. For when the sword is unsheathed or an unjust sentence is
pronounced or torture is applied for the requirements of the cases,
or they devote their care to preparing games, or attend games
prepared for them-they are making a large claim, not if they
aspire to a bishopric, but if having undergone penance for all this
they are allowed, after a certain time has elapsed, to approach
the altar.' Pope Siricius and his successors debarred from holy
orders all who after baptism had held administrative posts, or
served in the army or the civil service, or had even practised as
barristers. In the same spirit those who had performed penance
and received absolution were forbidden to return to their posts.
Government service, if not in itself sinful, was so perilous, so
liable to lead to acts of extortion or cruelty, that it unfitted a man
for the service of God and should not be risked by those who
had no further opportunity of having their sins remitted. Many
Christian writers adopt the same attitude. Augustine is somewhat
exceptional in asking Caecilianus, who holds some public office,
why he is still a catechumen, 'as if the faithful, the more faithful
and the better they are, cannot administer the state the more
faithfully and the better'. Paulinus of Nola writes in a very different
tone, urging his correspondents to resign from their posts or
abandon the official careers which they contemplated in order to
take up a Christian life. 'Ye cannot serve two masters,' he quotes
'that is the one God and Mammon, in other words Christ and
Caesar.'
99
In the pagan scheme of morality the service of the state in peace
and war was a noble activity, and even philosophers, though they
might prefer a life of contemplation, were in duty bound to under-
take it. A whole literature was devoted to the virtues required of
a ruler, piety, justice, courage, temperance, self-control, and
above all love of his fellow men. It is of course truethatthemajority
of pagans in positions of authority did not live up to these ideals
but at any rate men of high character were encouraged to e v o t ~
themselves to the service of the state. Good Christians on the
other hand were made to feel that they were, if not sinners, falling
short of the highest ideals, if they entered public service. Many
good men preferred to live a life of retirement or take holy orders
and many that did take up an official career must have felt that
having thus committed themselves to a sinful life, they might as
well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
CHAPTER XXIV
EDUCATION AND CULTURE
C
ULTURALLY the Roman empire fell into two halves,
the Latin-speaking West and the Greek-speaking East.
The boundary was sharply defined. In Africa it lay in
the desert separating the Romanised Punic cities of Tripolitania
from the Greek cities of the Pentapolis. In Europe Greece and
Macedonia and Epirus were Greek speaking, as were the four
provinces of Thrace south of the Haemus range, together with
the cluster of old Greek cities on the Black Sea coast as far as
the mouth of the Danube. North and west of this line, in the dio-
ceses of Dacia and Pannonia, and in the Danubian provinces of
Thrace, Latin prevailed. There seem to have been no surviving
enclaves of Greek in the West; Sicily and southern Italy had been
Latinised by the end of the third century: <;:onversely Roman
colonies in the East had long been assimilated by the!! Greek
environment.
The linguistic boundary in Europe, it may be noted, did not
coincide with either the political or the ecclesiastical frontiers.
The Eastern emperors always had some Latin-speaking subjects
in Moesia Inferior and Scythia, and from 395 ruled the Dacian
diocese while in the fourth century some Western emperors ruled
the of Macedonia. The patriarch of Constantinople
controlled a few Latin-speaking sees on the lower Danube, while
the pope established his jurisdiction over the Greek churches of
Macedonia, Epirus, Greece and Crete.
The linguistic Cleavage grew sharper from the third century
onwards. In the Ciceronian and Augustan ages cultivated Romans
had been as much at home in Greek as in Latin. With the growth
of a Latin literature and the development of an educational system
based upon it, Greek inevitably fell into the background, but
even in 'the latter part of the second century Marcus Aurelius wrote
his intimate diary in Greek.
By the fourth century things had changed. Greek was still a
regular part of the school curriculum, and not only the sons of
986
LATIN AND GREEK
aristocratic fatnilies but boys from humble tniddle class homes like
Augustine learnt from the grammaticus to construe Homer and
Menander. But Greek was not continued at a higher level under
the rhetor, and most boys never got beyond a rather elementary
stage. Augustine adtnits that he hated Greek at school, and he
never seems to have mastered the language, preferring to read
Greek authors in translations, sometimes painfully verifying a
passage with the aid of the dictionary. An aristocrat like Paulinus,
Ausonius' grandson, brought up by Greek slaves, was able to
read Homer and Plato when he was only five years old, but even
aristocrats do not seem to have kept up their Greek in later life.
So cultivated a nobleman as Symmachus had to rub up his Greek
to help his son with his lessons. 'While my son is being initiated
into Greek letters,' he writes to a friend, 'I have joined his studies
afresh like a schoolfellow. Parental affection bids us become boys
again, so that shared labours may instil the charm of literature into
our children.'l
In the fifth century boys in aristocratic homes still learnt Greek.
In Gaul Sidonius Apollinaris remembered enough to read Menan-
der to his son in the 46os. In Africa Fulgentius, who was born
in 467, learnt to pronounce Greek with a perfect accent thanks to
his mother's care, knew his Homer by heart, and read most of
Menander; but in later life, his biographer adtnits, he lost the habit
of either speaking or reading the language. It may be doubted,
however, whether Greek continued to form part of the regular
curriculum taught in the schools. Even at the end of the fourth
century competent teachers of Greek were evidently hard to
find in the Western provinces. Gratian, though he ordained that
Greek and Latin grammarians should be appointed in every
provincial capital in the Gallic prefecture, at the same time ex-
pressed doubts whether a worthy candidate could be found for
the post of Greek grammarian even at Trier, then the imperial
capital.
2
There were of course some scholars in the West who made a
serious study of Greek, pagans like Agorius Praetextatus, who
read the Greek philosophers, and Christians like Jerome and
Rufinus, who wished to know the scriptures in the original and
to study the works of Eastern theologians. In Italy there were
still a few such scholars in the sixth century, Boethius for instance,
Cassiodorus and Dionysius Exiguus; but their number was always
very litnited, and even men of learning relied for the most part on
Latin translations of Greek works. These were produced in
large numbers throughout the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries to
meet the needs of an educated public to whom Greek literature
HH
had become a closed book. But the number of translators capable
of performing this work was small, and it is significant that two
of the more celebrated, John Cassian and Dionysius Exiguus,
were immigrants from the bilingual province of Scytbia. a
The Greeks never ceased to look upon the Romans as bar-
barians: they regarded their own language and literature as
supreme, and desptsed that of Rome. Latin was no part of the
regular educational curriculum in the East, and Latin literature,
whether secular or religious, was not read. An anecdote told by
Cassian is significant. An Italian who became a monk in Egypt
could write Latin book hand, but had no other skill. Wishing to
provide him with work, his kindly abbot declared that he had a
brother in the civil service well versed in Latin, to whom he
wished to send a holy book. This was a pious fraud; the Latin
book 'would be of no use or profit, since everybody in these parts
is completely ignorant of that language' .4
Broadly speaking it is true to say that Greeks learnt Latin only
from interested motives. Some few authors of Eastern origin
wrote in Latin in order that their works might reach high senatorial
society in Rome, with the curious result that the last of the Latin
historians was Ammianus of Antioch, and the last of the Latin
poets Claudian of Alexandria. But most Greeks learnt Latin from
motives of a more crudely materialistic kind. In the fourth century
Latin was the official language of the empire even in the Eastern
parts, and a knowledge of the language was, if not essential, a
useful asset to a man who aspired to rise in the administration,
the army, or the law.
It is not easy to determine how far Latin was effectively used in
the. administration of the Eastern empire. The Roman government
had from the beginning communicated with its Greek subjects in
Greek. Laws and edicts were promulgated in an official Greek
translation; letters and rescripts to Eastern provinces, cities and
individuals were drafted in Greek; proceedings in the courts were
conducted in Greek. In effect therefore Latin was used for very
limited purposes only. Imperial constitutions were drafted in
Latin, as well as in Greek, by the quaestor and his clerks: this was
still so in Justinian's day, though by that time the master text was
in Greek, and the Latin a translation, often inaccurate. Latin was
also used down to the fifth century for internal records and inter-
departmental correspondence in the higher levels of the administra-
tion. The papyri show that even in the fourth century Greek was
almost exclusively used in the provincial offices and in that of the
Augustal prefect, Latin being preserved only in the record of
judicial proceedings. Even there it is used only in the formal
LATIN AND GREEK
heading giving the date and place of the trial and the names of
the judge and of the parties and their counsel, and for indicating
the speakers in the course of the proceedings-'Flavius Hesychius
v.p. praeses dixit'. In the praetorian prefecture of the East, how-
ever, it was only Cyrus, prefect in 439-41, who abolished the use of
Latin, and John Lydus, who strongly deplored the change, has
preserved a number of the old Latin formulae which had been in
use until that date.5
In the army Latin was more persistent. Under Constantius II
the official letter from Flavius Valacius, dux of Egypt, to Flavius
Abinnaeus, praepositus of Dionysias, is in Latin, and Flavius
Abinnaeus Cfrafted his petition to the emperor, protesting against
his dismissal, in that language. Under Anastasius a formal letter
from the comes of the Thebaid to the tribune of Hermopolis is in
Latin. Even in the early sixth century then, it would appear,
clerks in the military offices had to have enough Latin to under-
stand and draft formal administrative communications.6
In the law Latin was still important in the fourth century. Not
that it played any significant part either in court proceedings or
in the drafting of legal documents. By an old rule the formal
written judgment had to be in Latin, until in 3 97 the use of Greek
was permitted even for this purpose. By another old rule the wills
of Roman citizens had to be drawn in Latin. It is not known when
this rule was relaxed, but it was certainly before 439 But even
while these rules remained in force it only meant that the notaries
and clerks of the court had to know how to write out certain
more or less stereotyped formulae. Even barristers, if they were
prepared, as many were, to take their law from a jurisconsult,
needed no Latin; they spoke in court in Greek, and imperial
constitutions were cited in their Greek versions. 7
Nevertheless for a real legal training, such as was increasingly
demanded of barristers, Latin was necessary. The sources of the
law, the works of the old jurisconsults and the standard collections
of imperial constitutions, were all in Latin, and the teaching of
law at Berytus and Constantinople seems to have been conducted
in Latin until the end of the fourth century at any rate: Libanius
links Latin and law as the twin enemies of Greek higher education.
It is not certain when .Latin was replaced by Greek as the language
of instruction at Berytus, but two early fifth century professors,
Cyril and Patricius, wrote text books and commentaries in Greek.
For a really scholarly knowledge of law Latin of course remained
necessary until Justinian's day, since the bulk of the legal literature
remained untranslated. But when the Institutes, the Digest and
the Code, with subsequent Novels, became the sole sources oflaw,
they were forthwith translated into Greek, and Latin ceased to be
essential even for the academic lawyer. s
In the fourth century then a rather rudimentary knowledge of
Latin was required of notaries and of civil servants in the judicial
branches of the provincial ojjicia, in the military ojjicia, and in the
praetorian prefectures and the palatine ministries. A competent
grasp of the language was needed by jurisconsults and by barristers
who were not content to be mere orators. A full rhetorical training
in Latin was essential only for the clerks of the sacra scrinia who
drafted imperial pronouncements. But at this period Latin might
still be socially useful to aspirants to high office. Some of
the emperors who ruled at Constantinople came from the West and
were more at home in Latin than in Greek: Constantine, though
he could speak Greek fluently enough, preferred to read the dis-
sertations on the faith, which Eusebius of Caesarea sent to him, in a
Latin translation. These emperors often promoted to high offices
of state Westerners, whose native language was Latin. Rufinus,
the Aquitanian barrister appointed praetorian prefect of the East by
Theodosius I, apparently knew little or no Greek-at any rate he
told Libanius that he had to have his letters translated to him.
A Latin-speaking Greek might then stand a better chance of
gaining the ear of the emperor or his influential friends.
9
In the fifth century the usefulness of Latin declined. It ceased
to be necessary for barristers, notaries or civil servants, except in
the military offices and the sacra scrinia. With the final division
of the empire the court became exclusively Greek in language and
culture. Latin became a learned language needed only by academic
lawyers and legal draftsmen.
Elementary Latin must have been widely taught in the East in
the fourth century: among the papyri of Egypt are many Greco-
Latin abecedaria and vocabularies, and texts of Virgil's Aeneid
and Cicero's Catilinarians with word for word Greek translations
in parallel columns. Higher teaching must have been harder to
come by; wealthy Antiochene parents, according to Libanius,
sent off their sons to Berytus or even to Italy to learn Latin and
law.
10
It seems probable, however, that a full Latin education in both
grammar and rhetoric was always available at the imperial capital.
Lactantius was professor of Latin at Nicomedia under Diocletian,
and in the state university of Constantinople, inaugurated in 42 5,
ten chairs were established of Latin grammar-as many as of
Greek-and three chairs of Latin rhetoric-as against five of Greek.
The large number of Latin professorships was no doubt inspired
less by practical needs than by motives of prestige-Latin was the
NATIVE LANGUAGES 991
language of the Romans, and Constantinople the second Rome.
These chairs were sometimes occupied by distinguished Latinists
from the West: the great grammarian, Priscian, from the Maureta-
nian Caesarea, taught at Constantinople in the early sixth century.
But the local candidates for the professorships were not always of
such high calibre. John Lydus, to judge by his surviving works,
was no profound Latinist-he had learnt Latin with a view to
becoming a memoria/is-but Justinian deemed him worthy of one
of the grammarians' chairs.U
The linguistic cleavage between East and West accentuated
and prolonged doctrinal controversies. Latin and Greek theolo-
gians spoke different languages both in the literal and in the
figurative sense of the words. Unable to read one another's works,
they thought along different lines, and developed different technical
vocabularies. Even in the early fourth century Constantine found
it difficult to find anyone to explain to him the complexities of the
Eastern heresies. Strategius, an Antiochene, who, owing to his
mastery of both Greek and Latin, was able to perform this function,
made his fortune by it, rising to be a comes and ultimately praetorian
prefect of the East. In the last stages of the Arian controversy
agreement between Basil and his school and Damasus and Ambrose
was long postponed because Latin-speaking theologians could not
understand the difference between ovata and {m;6aoaatc;, both
rendered substantia in the dictionaries. When Pope Leo's delegates
at Ephesus could contribute nothing to the discussion, except an
occasional 'contradicitur', and had to fall back on an interpreter to
make any longer statement, real understanding between the
Eastern and Western churches was difficuJt.12
Within their respective zones Latin and Greek were the sole
languages of administration and law, and with a very few minor
exceptions, of literature, secular and Christian, and of polite
intercourse: they were, indeed, almost the only written languages.
East of the Euphrates, in Osrhoene and Mesopotamia, Syriac had
survived, not only as a spoken, but as a written language, and it
was adopted by the local churches as the language of the liturgy.
Not only were the scriptures and many Greek theological works
translated into. Syriac, but a considerable mass of original literature,
mostly chrorucles and hymns, was produced from the fourth
century onwards. Syriac enjoyed in this area the status of a literary
language. It was taught in the schools of grammar and rhetoric,
as were Latin and Greek, and it was possible in Osrhoene and
Mesopotamia for an educated man to know no Greek: even bishops
from that area sometimes subscribe to councils in Syriac.13
In Egypt the indigenous language did not maintain a continuous
literary tradition, and failed to achieve the same status as did
Syriac. Under the Principate the demotic script was less and less
used, and seems to have died out before the end of the third
century: Egyptian thus became a mere peasant patois. During
the third century the Greek alphabet, with the addition of a few
demotic characters, was adapted for writing Coptic. But even
when it thus again became literate, it remained the language of the
lower classes only. No educated Egyptian deigned to write in
Coptic, and Coptic literature, apart from translations, was confined
to popular lives of the saints.l
4
In the Latin zone no indigenous language even achieved literacy,
and the only rival to Latin was Gothic. When the Goths were
converted to Christianity in the latter part of the fourth century,
the scriptures were translated into their language, a special alphabet,
mostly derived from Greek, being devised to write it. The lan-
guage and alphabet continued to be used by the Gothic church,
but it would seem as if only the clergy learned to write their
native tongue. The Gothic kings invariably used Latin for
administrative and legal purposes. Even the clergy appear often
to have preferred Latin. In a deed dated 55 I, whereby the Gothic
church of Ravenna surrendered some property to a creditor, all
the clergy, who numbered eighteen, appended their subscriptions.
Of the ten who were literate, six subscribed in Latin and only
four in Gothic.
15
Though the documents make it clear that Greek and Latin were,
with these minor exceptions, the only written languages, it is
much more difficult to estimate how far they were the normal
speech of the mass of the people. There were of course areas where
they were indigenous or had long superseded the native tongues.
Latin was the only language of Italy, and probably had ousted
Celtic, Ligurian and Iberian in southern Gaul and in eastern and
southern Spain.
The survival of Welsh and Cornish implies that Celtic was still
the dominant language in Britain when it was lost to the empire
in the fifth century. There is evidence for the survival of Celtic
in Gaul at the same period. Sulpicius Severus in the Dialogus
represents Gallus, a disciple of Martin of Tours, as apologising
to the Aquitanian Postumianus for the rusticity of his Latin, and
Postumianus replies: 'Talk in Celtic or in Gallic, if you prefer,
so long as you talk about Martin.' The jesting allusion implies
that Celtic was a living language in central Gaul when Sulpicius
NATIVE LANGUAGES
993
wrote. Nor is there any reason to doubt that when Jerome stated
that the dialect of the Galatians of Asia Minor closely resembled
that spoken around Trier he was speaking from personal know-
ledge.16
The survival of Basque demonstrates that Iberian still flourished
in the mountains of northern Spain throughout the period of
Roman rule, and Severus of Minorca, writing in 418, speaks of
'a very fine hail which the inllabitants of that island call "albigis-
tinum" in their native language' .17
For Africa the evidence is fuller and more explicit. Augustine
frequently alludes to Punic as the language of the people. On
several occasions he used a Punic interpreter to conduct arguments
with Donatists, especially circumcellions, and when he established
an episcopal see at Fussala, a country town in his own diocese,
he looked out for a Punic speaker to fill it. From words which
Augustine quotes it is clear that the language which he calls
Punic was Phoenician, which had survived in the coastal areas
from the days of the Carthaginian domination of Mrica. The
survival of Berber in modern Algeria shows that inland the old
indigenous language continued to be spoken. IS
For Illyricum there is no contemporary evidence, and we have
to rely entirely on the evidence of survival. On the one hand the
wide currency ofVlach, especially in-the northern Balkans, suggests
that Latin must have been the dominant language of the Danubian
provinces. On the other hand Albanian represents the indigenous
Illyrian tongue, which must have prevailed in the mountains of
Dalmatia.
In the Eastern half of the empire Greek was spoken not only in
Greece proper, Macedonia, Epirus and the islands of the Aegaean,
but in the western districts of Asia Minor, where Lydian and Carian
had long been extinct, and along most of its southern coast, in
Lycia, Pamphylia and Cilicia, and in Cyprus. In Thrace, however,
the native language survived. John Chrysostom states that the
scriptures were translated into Thracian and Gregory of Nyssa
speaks of Thracian as a living tongue: even in the sixth century the
services in the monastery of the Bessi in Palestine were con-
ducted in their native language.l
9
In the interior of Asia Minor also native languages persisted.
Jerome states that the Galatians still spoke Celtic in his day, and
in the middle of the sixth century Cyril of Scythopolis tells of a
Galatian monk in Palestine who was struck dumb, and who, on
recovering his speech, could at first talk only in Galatian. Basil of
Caesarea in one of his sermons alludes to Cappadocian as a language
familiar to all his hearers. In the latter part of the sixth century
994
we are told of a Lycaonian, who knew no Greek; when he was
miraculously cured at the shrine of S. Martha at Antioch, he
glorified God in his own language, while his companion, who
did know Greek, interpreted his story to the wondering crowd.
At the same period an Isaurian who had returned from Antioch
to his native town was cured of paralysis, and all the people,
seeing the miracle, cried aloud in their own tongue. For northern
and north-eastern Asia Minor evidence is lacking, but it seems
likely that in these remote and backward areas the native languages
survived.
20
For Syria and Palestine the evidence is much more abundant,
and it is clear that Syriac was the normal language of the peasantry
and of the lower classes in the towns. John Chrysostom in one of
his sermons speaks of the country folk who came into Antioch on
the Sunday before Palm Sunday as 'a people divided from us in
language, but agreeing with us in faith'. Publius, a decurion of
Zeugma, who founded a monastery in the desert, at first had Greek
speaking disciples only. Later Syriac-speaking peasants wished to
join the community, and Publius, remembering the text 'Go teach
all nations', felt obliged to admit them. But the Greek and Syriac-
speaking monks lived separately, meeting oniy for divine worship,
which they each celebrated in their own tongues. Many of the
famous hermits of the Syrian desert knew no Greek: Macedonius,
known to the people as Gubba, when he went into Antioch to
intercede for the city after the Riot of the Statues, spoke to the
imperial commissioners through an interpreter. Theodoret, on
meeting the hermit Thalalaeus, was at first surprised to find that
he spoke Greek; it later transpired that he was a Cilician by origin.
In Palestine one of the martyrs in the Diocletianic persecution was
Procopius, a reader of the church of Scythopolis, whose function
it was to translate the service into Syriac for the benefit of the
humbler members of the congregation. The hermit Hilarion,
when he visited Elusa, was greeted by the townsfolk in Syriac.
When Porphyry, bishop of Gaza, was perplexed as to how to
demolish the solidly built temple of Marnas, a small boy was
inspired to instruct him in Greek; miraculously, as it appeared,
for it was found that neither the boy nor his mother could speak
the language.
21
From Egypt the evidence is fullest and most instructive. The
papyri would at first sight suggest that Greek was the normal
language used by all classes in town and country alike. Not only
are all administrative documents, even those addressed to or
proceeding from village headmen and tax receipts issued to
peasants, written in Greek, but so are all leases, contracts and
NATIVE LANGUAGES
995
other business documents, down to the loan of a solidus or two
and Y.early tenancies of two or three arurae. The vast majority
of pnvate letters, even from the humblest folk, are written in
Greek.
A closer study of the papyri shows that the first impression is
misleading. The legal documents were written by professional
notaries, who often also wrote the subscriptions and affidavits of
the parties, who are declared to be illiterate, or to 'write slowly'-
they could presumably just spell out their names in Greek. Many
administrative documents were also written by professional
scribes, and a study of the hands in which private letters are
written, and a comparison of the texts of the letters with their
signatures, shows that a very large number of them also are the
productions of professional letter writers.
22
The papyri thus prove that a high proportion of the humbler
ranks of society, both rural and urban, were illiterate in Greek.
Other evidence suggests that they could not speak the language
either. In a trial held in 340 the headman of the village of Caranis
addresses the court through an interpreter. When at the end of
the fourth century a party of Greek visitors was touring the
Egyptian monasteries, one of their hosts, the abbot Apollonius,
picked out three of his monks who knew both Greek and Egyptian
to escort them to their next objective, 'so that they might both
interpret for us, and also edify us by their conversation'. In the
sixth century the government yielded so far as to post some public
notices in Coptic as well as in Greek. 23
It may be conjectured that similar conditions prevailed in many
parts of the empire. There seems to have been a sharp cultural
cleavage between the upper classes, who had not only received a
literary education in Latin and Greek, but probably spoke one or
other of these languages, and the mass of the people, who were not
only illiterate, but spoke in a different tongue. From the evidence
cited above it is clear that many of the common people, not only
peasants but townspeople, had no knowledge of Greek or Latin.
On the other hand many of the upper classes evidently could not
speak the language of the people. Augustine knew a few words of
Punic, but could not conduct an argument in it, and seems to have
found some difficulty in finding among his clergy men who knew
Punic. In one of his sermons he translates a Punic proverb into
Latin, 'since not all of you know Punic'. In the Egyptian courts
the judges and advocates, though local men, could not understand
evidence given in Egyptian. There must, it is clear, have been a
fairly large number of people who were bilingual, notaries and
scribes, professional interpreters for the courts, bailiffs and agents
996 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
who acted as intermediaries between landlords and their tenants
and labourers. Many of the rural clergy must also have been
bilingual; in Egypt they often acted as scribes for their humble
parishioners.
24
The extent of Hellenisation and Latinisation in the various parts
of the empire is very difficult to gauge, and naturally varied very
greatly from district to district, and from town to town. In general
it was the rural areas, the villages and the remote country towns
which were least Latinised or Hellenised. In the larger cities it is
likely that many or most of even the lower classes spoke Latin or
Greek: Augustine would not have written his Psalm against
the Donatists in simple colloquial Latin unless 'the very humblest
masses and the altogether uneducated simple folk' in Hippo and
the larger cities of Africa had been Latin speaking.
25
On the whole it would seem, however, that in large parts of the
empire it was only a thin upper crust which was Latinised or
Hellenised. The evidence of survival is here particularly suggestive.
In Syria and Egypt Greek does not seem to have outlived the end
of Roman rule by more than about a century. It was maintained
by the Arabs as their administrative language until the middle of
the eighth century, but when <;>rdered the .use of
Arabic in the government offices Jt qu1ckly d1ed out. Synac
Coptic, on the other hand, were adopted by the local monophys1te
churches as their liturgical and literary languages, and continued
to flourish down to the late middle ages. In central and eastern
Asia Minor the native languages were ultimately ousted by Greek,
but after several more centuries under a Greek-speaking govern-
ment and church: in the sixth century, as the evidence cited above
shows, the native languages were still alive, and may well have
been dominant.
In the Western parts of the empire also it is on the whole in areas
which continued after the fall of the empire to be ruled by Latin-
s peaking governments that the Romance languages have prevailed.
In Africa Latin disappeared, but Berber has survived to the present
day. In Britain, where the Celtic population set up its own govern-
ment after the collapse of Roman rule, Celtic and not Latin survived,
and in similar circumstances in north-eastern Spain Basque has
prevailed, as has Albanian in Dalmatia. The final victory of Latin
over Celtic and Iberian in Gaul and Spain may well have been
achieved under the Merovingian and Visigothic kings.
When therefore we speak of the culture of the empire, we must
remember that it was the culture of a very small minority. In
many areas the bulk of the population could not understand either
of the languages which were the vehicles of culture, and throughout
SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS
997
the empire the peasants and the labourers, the craftsmen and the
shopkeepers who formed the majority of the urban population
were for the most part illiterate.
Education fell into three stages, the primary school which taught
the three Rs, the grammar school, and the school of rhetoric.
The primary schoolmaster was a very humble personage. In the
Diocletianic tariff his scale of pay is fixed at 5o denarii a month
per pupil, as against the 200 and 2 5o allocated to the grammarian
and the rhetorician respectively, and he was denied the immunities
and privileges which they received. Seeing that in the tariff crafts-
men are given daily wages of 5o or 6o denarii, plus their keep, it is
clear that a primary schoolmaster would have had to have a large
class in order to live on the same scale as a mason or a carpenter. 26
Primary schools must have existed not only in cities but also in
some villages, to produce the rural notaries and letter writers,
clergy, agents and clerks, but we hear little of them. Theodoret
talks of a catholic priest named Protogenes, who was exiled by
V alens to Antinoopolis, and found to his distress that most of the
population were pagans. He opened a school, which seems to
have been primary, since the syllabus included shorthand, and by
using biblical texts as exercises he instructed his pupils in the
Christian faith. John ofEphesus tells of two holy men, Simeon and
Sergius, who settled in a village near Amida, and earned their
living by keeping a school in which they taught thirty or forty
infants and boys. Such schools taught reading and writing and
arithmetic: Augustine in his Confessions recalls his boredom as a
small boy, chanting the dreary tables-'unum et unum, duo:
duo et duo, quattuor'. Instruction was in Latin or Greek only,
except in Egypt and Mesopotamia (and probably Syria), where
Coptic and Syriac were also taught.27
These schools were attended by the children of middle class
parents and by some poor boys; among the aristocracy the first
stage of education seems generally to have been given by a private
tutor, usually a slave. Higher education was for all practical
purposes reserved to members of the upper and middle classes,
roughly from decurions upwards. Not only could few poor
parents afford to keep their children idle when they might have been
earning, but the fees were four or five times as high as at an ele-
mentary school. Moreover grammatical and rhetorical schools
were not to be found in every city-Augustine received his ele-
mentary education at his home town of Tagaste, but his father
had to send him to Madaurus for his grammar and rhetoric.
A boy might therefore have had to be boarded at some distance
from home for several years, and a slave had to be provided to
serve as his paedagogus. In these circumstances it is not surprising
that only an exceptionally brilliant and ambitious poor boy could
achieve a higher education, as did Aetius, who paid for his educa-
tion by acting as his professor's personal servant.
28
Unlike elementary education, which received no encouragement
from the state, and was left entirely to private enterprise, higher
education was favoured and subsidised. The state maintained a
number of chairs at Rome and Constantinople, whose occupants
were paid salaries from public funds, and most important cities
had municipal chairs maintained from the civic revenues. Gram-
marians and rhetors who held these official posts enjoyed many
privileses, originally granted \'nder .the Princi)2ate and
maintamed by later emperors, mcludmg exemption from mil1tary
service, billeting and all sordida munera, and, most important of all,
immunity from curial obligations. 29
It is difficult to say how many cities maintained official professors,
for we naturally hear most of municipal chairs at the greatest
cities, such as Milan and Carthage in the West, and Athens,
Nicomedia or Antioch in the East. A law of Gratian orders that
chairs of rhetoric and of Greek and Latin grammar should be
established from state funds in the most populous cities, by which
are apparently meant the provincial metropo!eis, throughout the
Gallic prefecture; which would seem to imply that in some pro-
vinces even the capital cities had hitherto lacked endowed chairs.
On the other hand in the East, apart from the exceptional case of
Athens, we know of municipal chairs at Nicaea and at Gaza,
which were not capitals of provinces.
3
0
There were no universities in the mediaeval or modern sense
of the word, corporate institutions which provided regular courses
of instruction, held examinations and granted degrees. There
were however a number of what may be loosely called university
towns, which had an established reputation as centres of higher
education, where the celebrated teachers tended to congregate,
and whither students flocked from all quarters of the empire.
Besides the two capitals there were, for instance, in the West
Carthage and Bordeaux, in the East Alexandria and above all
Athens. But higher teaching was by no means confined to such
centres, and a celebrated teacher like Libanius might make Antioch
a serious rival to them as long as he lived; he drew pupils not only
from Syria and Palestine but from many provinces of Asia Minor.
31
The length of the course was fluid. Three years seems to have
SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS 999
been normal for the rhetorical stage, but a serious student with
ambitions to become a professor himself might go on studying
for far longer. There were no formal examinations or degrees.
Students demonstrated their talents by the public declamations
which they delivered as part of their training, and the nearest thing
to a degree was a letter of recommendation from the professor
under whom one had studied.
32
Some university towns had their specialities over and above the
normal course of grammar and rhetoric. Alexandria was cele-
brated for mathematics, astronomy and medicine; Athens, with its
ancient endowed chairs of the various schools, was the acknow-
ledged centre of philosophical studies, though philosophy was also
taught at Rome and Constantinople. The two capitals pro-
vided instruction in law, but the great centre of legal studies was
Berytus. In this field teaching was more systematically organised.
There was a regular four year course, with a set syllabus for each
year, and students who had completed it to their professor's
satisfaction obtained a formal certificate, which in the late fifth
century became an official qualification for being called to the bar.
In these specialised fields, as in the normal literary course, the
more celebrated centres of study enjoyed no monopoly until
Justinian prohibited the teaching of law except at Rome, Con-
stantinople and Berytus.aa
At Constantinople Theodosius II in 42 5, when he greatly
increased the number of official salaried professors, gave to them
the monopoly of higher education. the capital.. TI:is a
unique privilege. In all the other c1t1es of the emp1re, mcluding
Rome, and in Constantinople at an earlier date, it was free to
anyone to open a grammatical or rhetorical sch'?ol, a_nd :nany
grammarians and rhetors successful
with the official professors m the greater cltles, or 1n c1t1es which
lacked official chairs.
34
Such private schools seem to have existed in qu.ite small places.
Libanius wrote to Paeoninus, who taught rhetonc at Tavmm, a
minor city of Galatia, recommending to him a pupil of his own
who proposed to open a probably grammar, in the
town. Ausonius tells of a barnster of Burdigala named Dynan11us,
who having been involved in a scandal in his native city, migrated
to the little Spanish city of llerda, where he became a successful
teacher of rhetoric under the assumed name ofFlavinius. Augustine
started his teaching career by opening a private school in his home
town of Tagaste, and having built up a reputation, moved first to
Carthage and then to Rome. It was not until he was thirty that the
city council of Milan, on the advice of Symmachus, prefect of the
city of Rome, appointed him to their official chair. Libanius was
encouraged to open a school at Constantinople by a friend who
promised him an audience of forty young men from best
families: his friend let him down, but he opened his school none
the less, and soon, as he proudly boasts, had over eighty pupils.
Feeling, as may be imagined, often ran high between the established
professors and young freelance teachers who threatened to out-
shine them and steal their pupils. Libanius' success brought him
the bitter enmity of the two official rhetors of Constantinople, who
with the aid of Limenius, a newly appointed governor, made the
city too hot to hold him. as
The Roman and Constantinopolitan chairs were filled bv the
senates of the two capitals, the civic chairs by the councils of the
cities. Julian, who was not only keenly interested in higher educa-
tion, but anxious to secure that men with the right religious views
should be chosen, ordered that all appointments should be sub-
mitted to him for his personal approval, but this rule seems to
have fallen into desuetude after his death. The Eastern emperors,
however,. often intervened in the appointment of professors in
Constantl!lople. There was naturally keen competition among
grammarians and rhetors for the salaried posts, and equally keen
competition among the cities to secure outstanding men for their
chairs.
36
The subsequent career of Libanius well illustrates both the
bitter. rivalries between the professors and the intrigues in which
they Uldulged, and also the strong interest which the councils
took in the appointments. By the time he was hounded out of
Constantinople Libanius had established his reputation as a teacher,
and he had no difficulty in securing a post. He would have gone
to Nicomedia, but that his enemy, Limenius, used his official
pro!Ubit him. J::Ie was, however, allowed to accept an
official InVItation from Nicaea. Soon afterwards he received a
second official invitation from Nicomedia, and this time no
obstacles were put in his way. Nicomedia already had one official
rhetor, but he had been so rude to the council that they decided to
bring in Libanius to undermine him.
Li?anius all his pupils away from him, and he
retaliated by brl!lgl!lg a charge of murder against Libanius. He
even. went to Cappadocia and persuaded Philagrius, the vicar of
Pontica, who happened to have been an old fellow student of his
at Athens, summon Libanius to Nicaea for trial. Luckily Philip,
the prefect, appeared on the scene, and Philagrius
was to with the plot under his superior's eye. Instead
a public competitiOn was arranged between Libanius and his rival,
SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS
IOOI
in which the former achieved such a resounding victory that
Philip arranged for an imperial decree to be issued summoning
him to the capital. Libanius was now appointed to one of the
official chairs at Constantinople by decree of the senate, confirmed
by the emperor.
Some years later Libanius received what he considered to be
the supreme honour of his academic career. The council of
Athens invited him to fill one of their chairs, which had always
hitherto been reserved for men already teaching in the city.
But Libanius hankered after his native Antioch, where he ultimately
obtained the official chair and spent the rest of his life. 37
Grammarians and rhetors were naturally drawn mostly from the
upper ranks of society, for if an ordinary rhetorical education
was expensive, the course of training required to make a success
as a teacher was very much more costly. It was normally very
prolonged. Libanius was already twenty-two, having studied
rhetoric for seven years, when he went as a student to Athens, and
he spent another three years there before he ventured to open a
school himself. Moreover it was almost essential to complete
one's education at one of the great university towns, or at any
rate under some celebrated professor whose fees would be high.
Augustine's father, Patricius, a modest decurion of a little Mrican
town, found considerable financial difficulty in sending his son to
complete his rhetorical studies at Carthage, and was only enabled
to do so by the aid of a wealthy fellow townsman, who recognised
Augustine's promise.as
Though the cost of training was high the rewards seem to have
been adequate. A beginner might have a hard time building up
his class; even Libanius, despite the successes he had achieved
at Constantinople and Nicomedia, started at Antioch with only
fifteen pupils. If he were less adventurous, and took a post as
assistant to an established teacher, he might earn a meagre living;
Libanius draws a pitiful picture of his four assistants, who had
to share one professorial salary between them and could not
afford to marry or to keep more than a couple of slaves apiece.
But once he achieved an established chair a grammarian was at
least assured of modest comfort. The scale of salaries laid down
by Gratian in Gaul was 24 annonae (equivalent to about I oo solidi)
for a rhetor, and 12 for a grammarian, with higher rates-30 and
20 annonae respectively for rhetor and grammarian-at the imperial
capital of Trier. These salaries, no doubt suggested by Ausonius,
a professor himself, were perhaps exceptionally high. At Carthage
Justinian allocated 70 solidi to rhetors and grammarians alike.3
9
The official salary was, however, the smaller part of a successful
1002 THE SYLLABUS
mainly from fees paid by his
pupils or their parents. Llbaruus was surprised and annoyed with
Gerontius of Apamea, who insisted on an official salary: 'When a
man has a class of rich pupils, why should he look elsewhere?'
We have ;10 figures for fees, which no doubt varied according to
the celebnty of the teacher, but they seem to have been considerable.
Libanius, whilst at Nicomedia, was robbed by one of his
slaves of r, 5 oo solidi: he must have put by this sum in less than
eight years.40
teacher's income from fees was, of course, somewhat pre-
canous. There was keen competition for pupils, which at Athens
took fort? of ?rganised Each professor's band
of pupils lay m wrut for new amvals at the Piraeus and Sunium
and forcibly abducted them and enrolled them in his class
for Brawls between rival gangs often
reqmred the Intervention of the proconsul from Corinth. Else-
where we do not _of open violence being used, but rivalry
as keen, and a bnlliant newcomer might lure away an estab-
lished teacher's pupils, as did Libanius at Constantinople at
Nicomedia and at Antioch. Even when a teacher had a
class, he was not sure of his fees. As the academic year drew to a
close, and fees were due to be paid, classes would melt away.
Such dishonesty according to Augustine was rife at Rome
and Libanius complains of it at Antioch, and advises his
teachers to insist on formal contracts with their pupils or their
parents.41
Eloquence and literary culture were immensely respected in the
Roman world, and professors enjoyed a social standing higher
than that which their b!rth or. wealth would normally have won
them. Symmachus considered It natural that an Athenian philoso-
pher who had opened a school in Rome should be elected to the
At . Constantinople the professors after twenty years'
service received a comitiva primi ordinis with rank of ex-vicars.
Distinguished teachers were accorded yet more elevated official
rank; Libanius was offered codicils of a quaestor by J ulian and of a
praetorian prefect by Theodosius I. 42
. Despite in. lane;uage the aims and technique of
higher educatiOn were Identical m East and West The theoretical
aim was a get:eral . edu:ation. comprising
grammar, rhetonc, . anthJ?etlc, geometry, music and
astronomy, and culrrunatmg m philosophy. In actual practice
SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS 1003
only first two of these subjects were seriously studied and
education was almost entirely linguistic and literary. It was based
on a rather limited range of classical authors. In Latin Virgil and
Terence, Sallust and Cicero were the standard four. In Greek
the range _was wider, including Homer, selected plays
of the Attlc tragedians and comedians, Thucydides, and Demos-
thenes and selected orations of the other Attic orators. But it
may .be suspected that this rather limited curriculum was often
curtailed. At Gerasa under Anastasius and Justinian poetasters
co1:1ld be found to wri.te dedicatory inscriptions for churches in
qmte tolerable Homenc hexameters, but their efforts at iambic
trimeters do not even scan.43
The aim. of t.he. system was to teach correct classical (in
Greek, Attic) d1ct10n, secondly to Instil appreciation of the form
and content. of classical literature, and thirdly, and most important
by far, to Inculcate the rules of rhetoric, and thus to train its
subjects to compose. and deliver elegant and flowery orations.
first task became Increasingly arduous as the spoken languages
diverged progressive!y in P.ronunciation, grammar, syntax, and
from their prot?types. It was achieved by
learnmg by rote declensions, paradigms and grammatical rules
(and the exceptions to them), by exercises involving the application
of these rules, and by a minute grammatical analysis of the classical
read in was instilled by memoris-
Ing the .recogruse? poetical rhetoncal tropes, and once again
by a rrunute at:alys1s the texts. Appreciation of the
content o.f the In practice the explanation of the
mythological, h!stoncal and geographical allusions in the texts
read. The grammatical stage of a liberal education was thus an
exacting grind of memorising rules and writing exercises, and then
of going through classical authors line by line, and word by word
while the teacher expounded and commented on them. Many
boys evidently found the process extremely tedious and their
attention was maintained by the use of the cane. '
The rhetorical stage was more interesting, for there were not
rules to and texts to analyse, but compositions to be
wntten and Not that the these.s set for such competitions
were of any great Interest. No real topic of contemporary life was
ever admitted. The themes of political speeches were based on
mytholog:y or ancient those of forensic speeches not on
real but on 1magmary and ;:tsua!ly fantastic problems.
Typical pol!t!cal theses, culled from L1baruus' Declamations are
an ambassad_orial speech of Menelaus to the Trojans,
Helen, or, slightly more up to date, 'Mter Chaeronea Philip sends
I!
I004 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
promising to give back z,ooo prisoners if Demosthenes is handed
over to him: Demosthenes asks to be surrendered.' A typical
forensic speech from the same collection is: 'There was a law that
with a tyrant his sons should be killed, and another law that a
tyrannicide could claim any boon he wishes. A woman kills her
husband who is a tyrant and asks for her sons as her boon.'
44
This system of education had its obvious defects. It included
neither mathematics nor science, and only very scrappy fragments
of geography, history or philosophy. What little geography the
average man learnt was derived from commentaries on the place
names occurring in the ancient authors, and bore very little relation
to the world in which he lived. His history was likewise derived
from literary allusions, or from collections of anecdotes suitable
for adorning speeches. Of philosophy he learned little but the
names of the gteat philosophers, and brief summaries of their lives
and doctrines. The learning that he acquired was a jumble of
miscellaneous lore, mainly mythological and antiquarian, but
containing odd pieces of history, geography, philosophy and
natural-or more often unnatural-history. A learned man was
one who, like Macrobius or Cassiodorus, bad accumulated a large
stock of such curious information.
On the other hand the standard education enabled men to read
their classics with enjoyment and appreciation, and to express
themselves fluently, if not always clearly; for the straining after
effect which a rhetorical training encouraged tended to produce a
style that was turgid and bombastic or cryptically epigrammatic.
Any educated man could readily turn off tolerable verses for an
epitaph or an epithalamium, and could write an elegantly phrased
letter, spiced with a few literary or mythological allusions. The
more talented might aspire to the more serious task of a panegyric
in prose or verse.
The upper classes of the empire were in this sense highly
cultured, and many of them spent much of their ample leisure in
reading the classics .or one. another's compositions, and in them-
selves composing prose or verse. The art of letter-writing in
particular was highly developed. To judge by the surviving
collections most educated men must have devoted much of their
time to writing letters to a very large circle of correspondents,
not with any practical end in view, but as a social convention.
A large proportion of the letters preserved contain no information
and solicit none, but are merely elegant compositions, which, if
they came from a celebrated figure like Symmachus or Libanius,
were treasured by their recipients as masterpieces and shown round
to a circle of admiring friends.
CHRISTIANITY AND EDUCATION
IOOj
It might have been expected that the church would have rejected
an educational system which was based on the pagan classics and
permeated with pagan mythology. There was a fundamentalist
current in Christian thought which regarded the .study of the classics
as sinful. Even highly cultured Christians sometimes had qualms.
Augustine as a bishop roundly condemned the literature which
he had taught as a professor, and J erome has revealed his scruples
in his account of his famous dream; standing before the Heavenly
Judge, 'asked my condition, I replied that I was a Christian: "You
lie," said he who sat in judgment, "you are a Ciceronian, not a
Christian. Where your treasure is, there is your heart also." '45
This rigorist current of thought finds expression in the Canons
of the Apostles, which though not official was widely accepted as
authoritative in the Eastern churches in the fourth, fifth and sixth
centuries. It expressly commands all the faithful to abstain from
all pagan books, and declares that the scriptures contain all that is
necessary not only for salvation but for culture. 'Do you want
history? There is the Book of Kings. Eloquence and poetry?
The Prophets. Lyric? The Psalms. Cosmology? Genesis. Law
and ethics? The glorious law of God.' Such sentiments were from
time to time expounded in the West also down to the end of the
sixth century. Gregory the Great was deeply shocked to hear
that a Gallic bishop, Desiderius, actually taught grammar, and
wrote to reprove him, 'because one mouth cannot contain the
praises of Christ together with the praises of Jupiter'. Desiderius'
sin was particularly flagrant because he was a bishop, but Gregory
felt that even laymen should refrain from the classics: 'and consider
for yourself how grave a sin it is for a bishop to recite what is
unseemly even for a religious layman'. 46
The average educated Christian had no such scruples, and even
the strictest fundamentalists had to admit that though it was a
sin for an adult to read the classics for pleasure, boys had to learn
them at school. As J erome points out, priests who 'abandon the
gospels and prophets, and read comedies, sing the amatory words
of bucolic verses, and cling to Virgil, make what is for boys a
necessity a deliberate sin for themselves.'
47
Tertullian, who had held the same view, had declared that though
Christian boys could not avoid learning the classics at school, it
was sinful for a Christian to teach the pagan authors. In this view
he was exceptional. From the third century onward we know of
many pious Christians who were distinguished teachers, and when
xoo6 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
Julian on the somewhat specious ground that Christians could
not expound the pagan poets and philosophers, debarred
them from the teaching profession, his action aroused a greater
storm of protest than any of his other anti-Christian measures.
48
J ulian ordered Christian professors 'to go to the Christian
churches and expound Matthew and Luke'. The reaction of two
of them, Apollinaris, a grammarian of Laodicea in Syria, and his
son of the same name, who was a rhetor in the same city, is
interesting and instructive. Between them they rewrote the
scriptures in classical. forms. To replace Homer, the
posed an epic poem m twenty-four books covermg the h1stor1cal
books of the Old Testament from the creation to the reign of
Saul, and converted other books into Euripidean tragedies,
Menandrian comedies and Pindaric odes. The son rewrote the
New Testament in the form of Platonic dialogues. But their
labour Socrates tells us, was wasted, for as soon as J ulian died,
Christlan teachers returned to the pagan classics.
49
This story well illustrates the immensely strong hold which
classical literary culture had on the educated classes of the empire.
To mix in polite society, and to make his way in th.e world, whatever
profession he adopted, a man had to know his pagan authors,
and to Christian parents of the upper classes it was unthinkable to
deprive their sons of the standard course of whatever
its spiritual dangers. It was not only correct d1ct1on and style that
were essential; the works of the Apollinares were, so Socrates
assures us, models of style, and provided examples of all the modes
of composition taught in the schools; it was the genuine classics,
with all the pagan gods and myths, which were necessary to make
a cultivated man.
The educational system was undoubtedly an obstacle to the
spread of Christianity among the upper classes. Men who had
been through the grammatical and rhetorical mill found the Greek
and Latin translations of the scriptures intolerable: as J erome
confesses, after a diet of Cicero and Plautus, 'if at length I returned
to myself, and began to read a prophet, the uncouth diction jarred'.
This in itself, in an age which set such immense store on verbal
elegance, was a serious matter. But even more important was the
fact that to an educated man all the glories of his classical heritage
were intimately connected with the pagan gods and myths.
5
0
Nevertheless so strong was the tradition that the church was
powerless to modify it. Throughout the fourth, fifth and sixth
centuries the schools maintained their syllabus unchanged, and
Christian boys continued to memorise the genealogies of pagan
gods and the amours of Zeus. Nor did the church make any signi-
LITERARY CULTURE 1007
ficant attempt to create schools of its own. There were classes
for catechumens in which the bishop or one of his priests gave
elementary instruction in Christian doctrine and morals to converts,
Provision was made in monasteries for teaching their letters to
illiterate postulants and to child oblates. But such monastic schools
in general catered only for future monks: Basil indeed contemplated
receiving boys not destined for the religious life, but there is no
evidence that parents sent their sons to monasteries; in the West
they apparently sometimes sent their daughters to nunneries.s1
In the sixth century in Italy, Spain and Gaul, when the secular
educational system was breaking down, it would seem that the
church was forced to make arrangements for maintaining a supply
of literate clergy. The second Council of Toledo in 527 ordered
all bishops to provide on church premises a school for the instruc-
tion of children destined for the priesthood, and two years later
the second Council of Vaison instructed all parish priests to teach
their unmarried readers the psalms and the scriptures with a view
to providing successors for themselves.
52
The instruction given in monastic, episcopal and parochial
schools was not only reserved for future monks and clergy but was
of the most elementary kind, merely reading and writing sufficient
to spell out and copy the scriptures. Only outside the sphere of
Greek and Roman culture in Mesopotamia did there exist Christian
schools of a higher grade, which gave a grammatical and rhetorical
education based on the Syriac scriptures. Augustine indeed drafted
a syllabus for a similar educational course in Latin, but it remained
in the realm of theory. Cassiodorus, inspired by the example of
the Syriac church, not only composed a syllabus, but founded a
monastery at Vivarium, where he put it into practice, but this lone
venture did not outlive its author. sa
The leading features of the literary culture of the later Roman
empire are its conservatism, its uniformity, and its widespread
geographical diffusion. The educational system taught men not
only to venerate the classical authors but to regard them as models
to be imitated, and a .contemporary poet or author was the more
highly esteemed the closer he approximated to the ancients. No
higher praise could be given to a Latin poet than to say that he
equalled or even surpassed Virgil, or to a Greek orator than to
declare him a modern Demosthenes: and such praises were to be
taken in the literal sense that their objects reproduced the diction
and style of their models.
roo8 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
Based on the same classics and an identical technique, the educa-
tional system produced a literary culture which was throughout
each linguistic zone completely uniform. There were no regional
schools of literature. Whether he lived and wrote in Gaul, Mrica,
or Illyricum, in Thrace, Cappadocia or Egypt, the training of every
aspirant to literary fame was identical, and the exemplars which
he strove to emulate the same.
This uniform culture was, moreover, remarkably widely diffused.
There were, of course, literary centres, such as Rome in the West
or Athens in the East, whose supremacy was generally recognised,
and outlying areas of the empire where culture was relatively
backward. Pacatus, delivering a panegyric on Theodosius I before
the Roman senate, professes to fear that 'in view of their inborn
and hereditary oratorical skill, the rude and unpolished roughness
of my Transalpine speech may not disgust' his audience, and one
of the speakers in Sulpicius Severus' dialogues modestly declares:
'when I reflect that I, a Gaul, am going to talk to Aquitanians,
I fear that my rather rustic diction may offend your too urbane
ears'.
54
These are somewhat insincere rhetorical compliments. Symma-
chus corresponds with men living in Gaul and Spain on terms of
perfect equality, and professes to derive as much pleasure from
their letters as they did from his; and Libanius writes to inhabitants
of remote cities of Armenia or Arabia with the evident assurance
that his classical reminiscences and mythological allusions will be
appreciated and savoured. It is indeed remarkable how many of
the leading literary figures of the later empire, especially in the East,
come from regions which under the Principate had been regarded
as backwaters. The great philosopher, Themistius, was of Paphla-
gonian origin. Cappadocia, whose barbaric Greek Philostratus
had scorned, produced in the fourth century a rich crop of dis-
tinguished authors, and not only from Caesarea, which had long
been recognised as a Hellenic oasis in the Cappadocian desert,
but from backwoods towns like Nazianzus. Even in Egypt, where
culture had been practically confined to Alexandria, the minor
cities of the Nile V alley now produced historians like Olympiodorus
of Thebes and poets like Nonnus of Panopolis.
The literary output of the age was large, but not on the whole
distinguished. There were many versifiers of varying degrees of
competence, from Dioscorus, the notary of the Egyptian village
of Aplirodito, who wrote reams of doggerel hexameters in the
reign of Justinian, to the great nobleman Sidonius Apollinaris,
whose verse panegyrics on Avitus, Majorian and Anthemius are,
if uninspired, technically respectable and replete with mythological
LITERARY CULTURE
learning. There were, however, few that could rank as poets.
Some of Ausonius' occasional verse has charm, and Claudian's
and. invec;ives ha;re rhet<:rical. power and many
felicitous hnes: Nonnus great ep1c, the D1onys1aca, has its admirers.
is no better. A of notable hymns were
wntten by d1verse authors, from Arnobms and Prudentius in the
fourth century to Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth: but most
. verse-Grego.ry voluminous poems for
m.stance, m Greek? m Latm, Pauhnus of Nola's poetical
tnbutes to S. Felix-1s of the same rather pedestnan quality as
secular verse.
55
The set pieces which were the most highly esteemed
12roduct1ons of the age are for the most part vapid and
turg1d m the extret;le. When, however, they have something to
say, orators can say lt cogently and eloquently; despite his involved
and often obscure style Libanius speaks well on themes that move
him. Christian oratory has a much greater range of themes and
of Some esJ?ecially those delivered on the great
festivals, are as rhetoncal m the worst sense as their secular
counterparts; encomia of martyrs in particular are closely modelled
on the standard panegyric and share its vices. There were on the
other hand some. good orators, like John Chrysostom,
who rhetoncal techruques to in exposition and
exhortation. There were other preachers hke Augustine, who,
though fully trained orators, deliberately adopted a simple and
matter-of-fact style better adapted to their humbler hearers. And
there were naturally uneducated or half-educated preachers who
aspired to a lofty style. The sermons of the age show one charac-
teristic which seems to be almost universal: they are mostly very
dull.
The other literary form which was highly esteemed, the letter,
is usually very jejune and artificial; but here again writers who are
normally dull can achieve distinction when they have something to
say. Symmachus' letters are mostly elegant nothings, but his
appeal for the Altar of Victory is sincere and moving, and Si doni us
Apollinaris can be a good raconteur and describe a scene vividly.
Many of the collections of letters which we possess were not
intended to be literature, and are none the worse for that. A
curious example of the epistolary form is the V ariae of Cassiodorus,
who wrote official letters on behalf of the Gothic kings so replete
with rhetorical tropes and antiquarian and mythological allusions
that they were regarded as literary masterpieces.
History enjoyed a great vogue in the Eastern parts. The contri-
bution of the West was very meagre in this field. In the fourth
IOIO EDUCA 'fiON AND CULTURE
century Aurelius Victor wrote thumbnail biographies of the
emperors and Eutropius a very brief Breviarium from the Founda-
tion of the City; this was an elegant summary for gentlemen who
had not the patience to plough through Livy. In the early fifth
century Sulpicius Severus wrote a similar elegant summary of
sacred history from Adam for cultured Christians, and Orosius a
Historia contra Paganos, a work of propaganda. Apart from this
there are only crude and meagre annalistic chronicles.
The East on the other hand produced many competent and
some great historians. In the fourth century Ammianus of Antioch
continued and emulated Tacitus, and if he falls far short of his
model in artistry, excels him in breadth of view and impartiality
of judgment. In the sixth Procopius of Caesarea took Thucydides
as his model in recording the wars of Justinian. He is in a different
class from his exemplar but is nevertheless a very sound and con-
scientious military historian. Besides these great names there was a
succession of very competent and workmanlike historians who
between them covered the whole period from Constantine to the
death of Maurice. Of their works only two have survived intact,
Agathias' continuation of Procopius' wars, and Theophylact's
narrative of the reign of Maurice. We have probably not missed
much by the loss of Eunapius, if we can fairly judge his quality from
his epitomator Zosimus. But to judge by their surviving fragments
many of the others, such as Olympiodorus, Priscus and Menander
wrote sound and interesting histories of their times.
Eusebius of Caesarea was a great scholar, whose command
of his voluminous and scattered documentary material is remark-
able. His Ecclesiastical History is by any standards a great work.
His successors were not of the same calibre, but several of them,
such as Socrates and Evagrius, were learned and competent.
The historians so far mentioned wrote for the educated public.
But history evidently appealed to a lower stratum of society; for
there were popular historians like John Malalas who wrote in
vulgar Greek and catered for the tastes of the common man,
describing minutely the personal appearance and manners of the
emperors and filling their pages with picturesque anecdotes and
social scandal.
Biography also had a great vogue. The pagan Eunapius wrote
the Lives of the Sophists in a very highflown rhetorical vein. There
are countless lives of saints and collections of anecdotes at every
literary level, from turgid and pretentious encomia to simple and
unadorned tales for the edification of the vulgar.
Scholarship, as was natural in so religious an age, was mainly
concentrated on theological studies. Much of the vast output
LITERARY CULTURE 1011
was inevitably mediocre and derivative. In bulk the greatest part
by far of the theological literature of the period consists of
commentaries on .the scriptures. Most of these follow too faithfully
the tradition of the secular grammaticus, explaining the text line by
line and word by word and commenting on obscurities with much
pedantic learning; the authors are also very prone to far-fetched
allegorical interpretations and rather trite moralising. Against
the many mediocrities, however, can be set a few great men, most
notably J erome, whose encyclopaedic learning and exacting
scholarship raised scriptural studies to a level not surpassed for
many centuries.
In theology in the narrower sense much of the literature is
again repetitive and derivative, but in the East a series of great
theologians, heretical and orthodox, formulated Christian doctrine
in philosophical terms, and worked out a solution of the problem
of the Trinity which has satisfied the church ever since: while the
West produced at least one great Christian thinker, Augustine,
whose theories have profoundly influenced all subsequent
ages.
In philosophy the West produced no great original thinker,
but in the East there was a succession of distinguished philosophers,
from Iamblichus in the early fourth century to Simplicius, Damas-
cius and John Philoponus in the reign of Justinian: all except the
last, who was converted late in life, were pagans. Their works
were mostly commentaries on Plato, Aristotle and the other
classical philosophers, but they were by no means all mere com-
mentators, who slavishly accepted the doctrines of the great
masters. Most were Platonists, who developed and refined the
ideas of the Platonic school. For this reason they were often
critical of Aristotle and did not hesitate to contradict his most
fundamental views. Their attacks were mostly based on internal
inconsistencies in the Aristotelian system, but they also made use
of scientific knowledge gained since Aristotle's day by observation
or experiment: John Philiponus anticipated Galileo in knowing
that heavier bodies do not fall faster than lighter, and applied this
knowledge to confuting Aristotle's cosmography.
These philosophers were familiar with the scientific experiments
and discoveries of the Hellenistic age, including steam power, but
it did not occur to them to try to put this knowledge to practical
use. The only inventor of the later Roman empire was an unknown
man who addressed a little treatise to Valentinian and Valens; he
was evidently a man of little education, probably a military officer.
His inventions include two ingenious scythed chariots, two pieces
of artillery, a portable pontoon bridge, and most ambitious of all
a warship propelled by three pairs of paddlewheels, operated by
oxen. 5
6
Apart from rhetors, grammarians and lawyers we know little of
the professional classes and their training. Doctors-those, that is,
who held official appointments-enjoyed the same immunities and
privileges as professors, and seem to have ranked socially more or
less on a par with them. The aristocracy of the profession was
formed by the court physicians (archiatri sacri,alatii), who normally
enjoyed the rank of comes of the first or secon class, and were often
rewarded with an administrative post; we know of one who became
comes thesaurorum, and of another who rose to be a vicar. They were
a highly privileged group, enjoying special exemption from all the
normal burdens of their elevated rank, including the g!eba senatoria.
57
Next came the public doctors of Rome, instituted by Valentinian I,
one for each of the regions of the city save two. Their posts were
evidently lucrative, for the government had to lay down stringent
rules against those who sought to obtain them by the interest of
the great.
58
Below these came the public doctors whom many cities main-
tained. The public doctors received salaries which no doubt
varied with the importance of the city. At Carthage Justinian
provided for five doctors, the senior of whom received 99 solidi,
the second 70 and the other three 50 each. We happen to know
from his will that Flavius Phoebammon, public doctor of An-
tinoopolis, metropolis of the Thebaid, drew 6o solidi per annum
in the latter part of the sixth century. He seems incidentally to
have been quite comfortably off, owning properties, partly in-
herited, partly acquired by himself, not only in Antinoopolis, but
in the neighbouring Hermopolite territory. Public doctors also
took fees from their patients. This is to be inferred from the code
of professional conduct laid down by V alentinian I for the newly
instituted archiatri . of Rome. Seeing that they received salaries
from the public funds, they were, he demanded, 'honestly to
attend the poor, rather than basely to serve the rich', and they were
authorised to accept what patients whom they had cured offered
them for their services, but not to demand fees from those in a
critical condition. Besides the public doctors there were no doubt
private practitioners who lived by fees alone, but we know little
of them. 5
9
The little that we know of a doctor's life is derived mainly from
the papyri and from hagiography. The former suggest that their
DOCTORS, ARCHITECTS AND ARTISTS 1013
principal activity was signing medical certificates for the use of
the courts and the administration, the latter that their fees were
exorbitant and their cures few. Both impressions are no doubt
unjust.
60
Medicine was taught at an academic level at Alexandria. It was
here that Caesarius, brother of Gregory Nazianzen, obtained the
qualifications that won him the post of court physician to Con-
stantius II. But the average doctor probably received his training
from the public doctor of his native town or the capital of his
province: it is assumed in the Code that the public doctors of the
cities normally took pupils, and that teaching was one of their
official duties. Flavius Phoebammon records in his will that his
father before him had been a public doctor, and it is likely that
sons often received their training from their fathers, and that the
profession tended, like so many others, to be hereditary.
61
Surveyors (geometrae), engineers (mechanici) and architects were
also professional men, belonging to the upper ranks of society.
Architects appear to have ranked lowest; in Diocletian' s tariff a
teaching architect is only to charge roo denarii a month for each
pupil, very little more than the fee of 75 denarii which teachers of
mathematics and shorthand were entitled to demand. A surveyor,
on the other hand, could charge 200 denarii, the same as a gram-
marian. Nevertheless architects were drawn from the educated
class: when Constantine, alarmed at the shortage of architects,
ordered that young men should be encouraged to learn the art
by the grant of immunity for their parents and scholarships for
themselves, he stipulated that candidates should be of about
eighteen years of age, and should already have received a liberal
education.
62
Engineers, who appear in fact to have been a superior grade of
architects, who planned large buildings involving complicated
structural problems, ranked the highest. Cyriades, who was
concerned with the erection of a bridge and a basilica at Rome
when Symmachus was prefect of the city, was a clarissimus comes.
Isidore the younger of Miletus, who was responsible for the repair
of Santa Sophia after the earthquake in 55 8, and for many others
of Justinian's public works, is styled magnificentissimus et illustris
on an inscription recording his work at Chalcis in Syria. Thanks
to Agathias we have more intimate information about Anthemius
of Tralles, the great engineer who shared with the elder Isidore of
Tralles the responsibility for Santa Sophia. He came of a family
of five talented brothers; Olympiodorus was a distinguished
barrister, Metrodorus a celebrated grammarian, Dioscorus and
Alexander both doctors; the former practised in his home town,
the latter had the distinction of receiving an appointment at Rome.
Anthemius himself was evidently an engineer of no mean order,
with a remarkable knowledge of mathematics and physics, as
appears not only from his architectural achievement.s but
his scientific practical jokes. He carried on a feud With a
guished barrister named Zenodotus, whose house was m the
same block as his own, and being defeated in a law suit, revenged
himself by producing artificial thunder and lightning and earth-
quakes in Zenodotus' appartments. The earthquake was par-
ticular! y ingenious, involving the use of steam pressure, and was
so convincing that Zenodotus fled in terror, and, rushing to the
palace, caused great mirth by asking everyone what damage their
houses had sustained. 63
Architects, engineers and surveyors enjoyed the social standing
which they were accorded because their arts were based on a
theory which could only be acquired by way of a
Painters and sculptors on the other hand, ranked With mosaicrsts
as .. A figure (pictor i":agina:ius) under
Dioclet!an's tariff received r 50 denarn a day with his keep, as
against 75 denarii for a wall painter, and 6o for a mosaicist, and
5o for an ordinary mason or carpenter; the privileges accorded to
painters by V alentinian I, which include immunity from the poll tax
for themselves and their families and slaves, show that they were
classified as plebeians.
64
The troubled period of the mid-third century, when monumental
building and the production of statuary and other works of art
almost came to a standstill, nearly broke the tradition of skilled
craftsmanship. Constantine in one of his laws complained that he
needed a large number of architects, but that none existed, and
he gave instructions for young men to be encouraged to learn
that art. In another law he granted immunities to a whole range of
skilled craftsmen, sculptors, painters, mosaicists, cabinet-makers,
gold and silver smiths, and the like, so that they might have
'leisure to learn their arts', and might 'both themselves become
more skilled, and train their sons'. That such measures were urgent
is amply demonstrated by the very low standard of technical skill
displayed even in important monuments, such as Constantine's
own triumphal arch at Rome, which were built in that period.
65
The shortage of men trained in the old traditions meant that
humble craftsmen had to apply their simple techniques to more
ambitious compositions, and in certain arts, notably sculpture, the
result was that a more primitive, but often more vigorous, style
emerged. In other arts, such as floor mosaics, the breach was less
noticeable, for private houses continued to be built throughout
DOCTORS, ARCHITECTS AND ARTISTS 1015
the most troubled periods. Here there is a remarkable continuity;
the same patterns go on generation after generation, if
designs become less common and floral and geometrica.l designs
are more favoured, this is probably due to lack of skill rather
than to a change of taste. In architecture the most notable feature
of late Roman provincial buildings is the.ir extremely .slovenly
technique. There was the penod . an Immense
quantity of worked stone ava!lable from the demohtion of pagan
temples and other now public buildings that new
stone cutting was scarcely ever required: the columns, entablatures
and doors of the average urban church are reused pieces of the
time of the Principate, and the walls are a patchwork of old blocks;
only the mosaic floors the marble of the walls and the
timber roofs with their coffered ceilings were the products of
contemporary craftsmanship. .
Skilled masons and carvers must have found httle employment
except under the imperial in the three
great imperial marble quarnes, which continued to produce
capitals and other ornamental members. Here a of fine
craftsmanship was built up and new forms architectural
decoration were evolved which came to flower 111 the age of
Justinian. . . .
In the provinces there was very httle monumental buJldmg
done under the later empire. Most cities were already over-
supplied with grand public buildings, and it was generally only
on the occasion of a great fire or earthquake, or . destruction .by
the enemy, that architects were given an opporturuty. maJor
exception to this rule is churches, many thousan.ds of were
built during this period. The response of architects to this ne.w
demand was not very interesting. Nearly all ;vere built
on a simple standardised plan, based on the basilica, which can be
dignified but is often dull. A few churches like the cathedral of
Bostra St. George's at Gerasa have interesting circular plans,
but these are very rare exceptions to the general rule. Nearly all
were timber roofed and presented no
It was again only in the employment ?f the Impenal
that mechanici were given the to more ambitious
buildings, and in particular to expenment .wlth the problems of
vaulting on a monumental.scale . .;\t Constantinople developed
a school of architects which ultimately under Just111lan produced
the masterpiece of S. Sophia.
In the visual arts as in literature, there was a remarkable degree
of uniformity thro'ughout the empire. In their humbler
there were of course regional idioms. There were local styles 111
IOI6 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
the tombstones of the poor, and in common pottery and metal ware.
There were local techniques of building, dictated by the materials
available and by age-old tradition. In Africa walls continued to
be built with stone uprights at intervals and rubble filling in
between; in Syria, where timber was very scarce, roofs were made
of stone slabs laid on transverse arches. For farm buildings and
humbler houses various districts had their traditional plans,
adapted to the climate and to the local building materials. In the
villages, which rarely possessed monuments of an earlier age
whose decorative members could be reused, churches built by
local masons often follow a regional style, derived from the local
domestic architecture.
In the arts which catered for the upper classes, on the other hand,
there was little variation from one end of the empire to the other.
Mosaic pavements in Britain and in Syria used basically the same
repertory of patterns and pictorial designs. Silver plate found in
all parts of the empire is so similar that experts cannot distinguish
its place of manufacture. The town houses and villas of the rich,
the baths and churches in the cities, in every province follow the
same designs and are ornamented in the same style.
The games, despite the thunders of the church, retained a central
place in the life of the empire. They were indeed, with the baths,
generally regarded as essentials of civilised life. Suspension of
the games and closing of the baths was a drastic penalty meted
out only in the most serious cases of disorder, like the famous
Riot of the Statues at Antioch. After the disastrous barbaric
invasions of Gaul at the beginning of the fifth century, the first
request of the city of Treviri to the imperial government, when
order was temporarily restored, was for chariot races. Salvian
regarded this as criminal frivolity-but he condemned all games
on moral and religious grounds. It might be regarded rather as a
heroic resolve to maintain civilisation in the direst extremities. 66
The passion for the games pervaded all classes of the population.
For the fervour of the commons the sanguinary riots in which the
rivalry of the Blues and the Greens often found expression are
sufficient testimony. But they appealed equally to the educated
classes. Augustine confesses to his craze for the mimes when a
young ;nan at Carthage, and tells of the hold which the chariot
races and the gladiatorial games gained on his younger friend
Alypius. Libanius constantly rates the councillors of Antioch for
thinking of nothing but horses, charioteers, bears and mimes;
PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENTS IOI7
when they sent a delegation to the emperor, he complains, their
requests were for such frivolities, to the neglect of the serious
needs of the i t y ~ The production of games was the only liturgy
which was sometimes undertaken without reluctance, and coun-
cillors often endangered their fortunes by their extravagant
expenditure. Though in public Libanius was severe-and the
games seem really to have bored him-he took infinite pains to
make the shows given by his relatives and friends an outstanding
success, writing to all his influential friends, vicars of dioceses or
governors of provinces, to provide wild beasts and whip up
hunters and athletes and facilitate their journeys by the grant of
postal warrants.
67
The types of games varied somewhat in East and West. In the
Hellenistic East games of the traditional Greek form, athletic
(including chariot races) and musical (including drama), were
well established before Roman rule. The Roman favourites were
chariot races, gladiatorial shows, wild beast hunts and the drama.
Under Greek influence athletic games were introduced later in the
West, but they were never widespread. Conversely gladiatorial
shows and wild beast hunts spread under Roman influence to the
East. Wild beast hunts caught on, but gladiatorial shows enjoyed
only a limited popularity.
Gladiators were as under the Principate either prisoners of war
and convicts, or free men who voluntarily signed on: a law of 3 57
forbids givers of shows to solicit soldiers or palatine officials to
enter the profession. Gladiatorial games were abolished by
Constantine in the East and by Honorius in the West, but wild
beast hunts continued to flourish in both halves of the empire.
They were, according to Libanius, the most popular item in any
show-people would rise at dawn to go to the theatre or the races,
but for the sake of the beast hunts, they would queue all night,
'deeming the paving stones softer than their beds' -and the
producers of the Syriarchic games at Antioch spared neither
trouble nor expense to get unfamiliar beasts from as far afield as
Mount Ida in the Troad. The Syriarchic festival was, of course,
an exceptionally big show, but even lesser towns indulged in their
spectacles' Once when the council of Antioch refused to put on a
wild beast hunt at the governor's request, to shame them he called
in the show about to be produced at the neighbouring little city of
Beroea. The expense of these spectacles was heavy. The beasts
had to be caught and transported long distances. They were
consequently rather dear; in the Edict of Diocletian an 'African
lion (first grade)' is priced at I5o,ooo denarii (equivalent to about
5o solidi), and even an 'African lioness (second grade)' cost
ror8 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
roo,ooo denarii (over 30 solidi). The hunters-who were ap-
parently professionals and were often sought from other provinces
-had to be paid, and the beasts had to be fed. In one of his letters
Libanius complains bitterly that after his nephew had spent all
his cash (and borrowed from his friends) to collect beasts and
hunters, an imperial ban had been laid on killing beasts, and the
games postponed, with the result that he would have to sell his
lands to feed them.
68
Athletic competitions still continued in the fourth century.
In 3 76 Gratian welcomed the revival of !Jmnici agones in Africa,
presumably at Carthage, and athletic contests continued to form
part of the Antiochene Olympia till the end of the century. They
seem indeed to have grown in popularity there. In his young
days, according to Libanius, they had been rather an exclusive
affair, given in a small arena before a select audience. But the arena
had been doubled and tripled in size by successive agonotbetae
and the vulgar crowd admitted. A constitution of Diocletian,
which limited the immunity from the curia traditionally given to
victors in the major games, shows that in his day athletes were
still, as under the Principate, drawn from the upper classes.
Technically amateurs, though in practice often professionals, they
seem in Libanius' day to have been still unpaid, fur he speaks of
agonotbetae attracting them from distant provinces like Asia by
the offer of supplementary prizes. After the fourth century there
is no mention of athletic games, but Justinian's republication of
Diocletian' s constitution on athletic victors implies that they
continued.
69
Chariot races enjoyed ever-increasing popularity. Star chario-
teers were eagerly sought for-and no doubt paid high salaries-
by the decurions who gave the games, and the aid of magicians was
also commonly invoked. For the big races horses were bought
from distant provinces. Libanius writes of a friend who trained
two teams-the gift of the emperor-in Bithynia for the Olympia
at Antioch, and Symmachus mentions an Antiochene mission
buying race horses in Spain. Breeding and training horses for the
games was reckoned the heaviest of all the liturgies, and those
who undertook it at Antioch received leases of civic lands to
compensate them.
70
Throughout the empire, both in the two capitals and in the
provinces, the rivalry of the Blues and Greens was intense. The
nature pf these two 'factions' is obscure. Under the Principate
there were at Rome four factiones, the Reds, Whites, Blues and
Greens. They were companies or guilds which furnished chariots
to the magistrates who gave the games, each factio providing one
PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENTS 1019
chariot for each race. They were apparently recompensed mainly
by prize money, but the losing jactiones presumabl:y: }SOt some
payment. The organisation. was to other cities of the
empire, and naturally acqUlred importance at Constan-
tinople when it became a second capital.
71
.
There were still four colours at Constantmople m the fifth
century, but only two, the Blues and the Greens, counted for
anything: Anastasius only the so . that he could
chastise the Blues and Greens With impartial seventy. Under
later empire the jactiones no longer seem to have normally supplied
the horses: all givers of games of whom we kuow from the emperor
and the great senators of Rome down to humble decurions bought
or bred their own horses. The jactiones at however,, had
their own stables in which they kept horses which they received,
either as their due or as free gifts, from the emperor and the consuls
and praetors. From these stables they perhaps fut;nished teams
to the more indigent or parsimonious senators, especially no doubt
those who did not organise their <;>wn games but the
business to the censua!es. The chanots, however, still contmued
to run under the colours of the factiones, who supplied the
charioteers and other required. By the century
the jactiones had come to mclude the dancers of the m!mes, the
keepers of the wild beasts, and probably all members of the
entertainment professions. 72
Each jactio had its ( a?:tiatlina<), .men who cut their
hair in a peculiar fashion and wore a distinctive style. of
like the modern Teddy Boy. They were the m the nots
which the games so frequently provoked, and accordmg t<;> Proco-
pius exercised a reign of terror in every city of the. empire.
apart from these enthusiasts every man and woman m the empire
from the emperor and downwards was a Bl':le or a
Green. As Procopius explams: 'The populace in every city has
from time immemorial been divided into Blues and Greens, but
it is only recently that for the sake of those of the
positions in which they stand to watch they lavish their .n:oney,
expose their persons to the most .cruel and are willing. to
die a dreadful death. They fight with their opponents, not kuowmg
what the struggle is thoug;h understand full well.that,
even if they defeat theJr adversanes m the fight, their fate will be
to be put into prison forthwith and after the extremest. tort1:1res
to be executed. The enmity which they feel towards their neigh-
bours is irrational, but it persists without end for all time. It
overrides the bonds of kinship or friendship, even if those who
quarrel about these colours are brothers or the like. They care for
KK
nothing human or divine beside victory in this contest, whether a
sacrilege is committed against God or the laws or the constitution
are overturned by domestic or foreign foes. Though they may
lack the necessities of life and their fatherland may be in
the direst straits, they do not bother if their "faction" is going
to gain an advantage: for that is the name they give to their fellow
enthusiasts. Even women share in this contagion, not only
supporting their husbands, but if it so happens opposing them-
though they never go to the theatres and have no other motive.
In short I can only describe it as a psychopathic condition.'
73
J erome tells a curious tale of how on one occasion a race was
run under colours other than the Blues and Greens. Italicus,
a Christian decurion in the strongly pagan city of Gaza, was ap-
pointed to produce one chariot, his opposite number being a
wealthy pagan, one of the duoviri of the town. Italicus, despairing
of his chances, especially as his rival had retained the services of a
celebrated magician, appealed to the hermit Hilarion to bless his
team and charioteer and stable. Hilarion at first reproved him for
his frivolity, but eventually, convinced that Italicus was merely
fulfilling his lawful duty in producing the chariot, he gave his
blessing. These facts became generally known, and excitement
rose in Gaza as the test of the two religions approached. The race
was run amidst cries of 'Victory to Mamas!' and 'Victory to
Christ!' Italicus' chariot won, and many pagans were con-
verted.74
The drama had by the fourth century-and probably long before
-given way to the mime, which was apparently a kind of ballet.
The themes continued to be drawn from Greek mythology, a
fact which exacerbated Christian dislike of the theatre, but recon-
ciled Libanius to its low intellectual level. The actors or dancers,
both male and female (scaenici, scaenicae), though many of them
were popular idols, were a despised class, very strongly reprobated
by Christian sentiment and excluded from membership of the
church unless they left the stage. The Christian emperors were
torn between their secular duty of keeping up the supply of
entertainers for their subjects and their Christian duty of at least
permitting actors and actresses to save their souls. Actors and
actresses could make a deathbed repentance and be received into
the church, but the provincial governor, or in his absence the
curator of the city, had in such cases to verify that they really were
in extremis, as, if they recovered, they could not be recalled to the
stage. Daughters of theatrical families might refuse to go on the
stage, and were excused so long as they behaved unexception-
:ably. Actresses might even abandon their profession if they
T
THE UNlTY OF THE EMPIRE I02I
wished to be received irito the church, but if they afterwards
returned to the stage w:ere conden;ned to it without reprieve. 75
One form of theatncal entertamment came under particular
reprobation, the maittma: very little is known of it, save that the
spectacle was aquatic, and, in Christian eyes, highly licentious. It
nevertheless continued to flourish. Many small theatres or odea
were adapted for it by making arrangements for flooding the
orchestra, and in 53 5 the city of Gerasa recorded by an inscription
a celebration of the festival in a small theatre, near a reservoir
outside the town, which was apparently specially built for it. 76
The games included other forms of entertainment. As might
have been expected in an age so addicted to rhetoric, they were
feas:s of oratory: i ~ a n i u s wrote his immense panegyric on
Ant10ch for the Olympra of 360 and regularly produced an oration
for subsequent celebrations. The Olympia also included a vast
banquet, at which the chairman of the games was expected to give
a present to every guest. But this last extravagance was abandoned
in Libanius' lifetime.77
A Roman citizen of the upper classes must have found himself
at home wherever he travelled. The cities which he visited and
the houses in which he stayed would have presented a very similar
appearance to those he left behind. Social habits varied little, if at
all: everywhere the baths offered the same amenities, and the
theatre, the circus and the amphitheatre provided the same enter-
tainments. Everywhere within his own linguistic zone he would
find the same language spoken, and the same literature read,
quoted and discussed.
This uniformity of cultural environment must have contributed
to the sense of solidarity which certainly existed. There is no
trace of regional separatism in the higher ranks of Roman society.
Some provinces had their proverbial characteristics; Gauls were
gluttons, Cappadocians stupid, and Ammianus calls almost every
Pannonian a brutal boor. Conversely a man might be proud of
his province, and laud its beauties or write up its history and
antiquities. But such local distinctions and local loyalties amounted
to very little. Augustine, as an African, might feel some senti-
mental sympathy for the cause of Dido, but basically he felt himself
to be a Roman, and the sack of Rome moved him to his depths.
The election of A vitus as emperor has been interpreted as an
expression of the national sentiment of the Gallic aristocracy. If
Sidonius Apollinaris was a typical senator, and there is every
!022 EDUCATION AND CULTURE
indication that he was, no such sentiment existed. The most
that can be said is that the Gallic senators may have felt that they
were as good as the Italians, and took the opportunity offered by
the anarchy in Italy after the Vandal sack of Rome to elect one of
themselves as emperor. Neither Avitus nor any of his following
showed the slightest inclination to create a separate Gallic empire.
That the upper classes of the Western parts should have felt
themselves to be Romans is not surprising. For centuries they
had spoken Latin, and for generation after generation they had
been brought up on Roman literature. No indigenous Gallic,
Spanish or African traditions survived, and what little they knew
of their past history of their own peoples was derived from
Roman sources. It is ironic that a Gallic senator desirous of
writing the history of his own country applied to the Roman
Symmachus for guidance, and was recommended to read Livy,
Caesar's Commentaries, and Pliny's German Wars-which were
in fact the only sources available. With this cultural background
it was inevitable that educated Western provincials should have
come to regard themselves as Romans, and to take pride in the
imperial traditions of Rome. 78
It is more surprising that the same sentiment prevailed in the
Eastern parts, where the language was Greek, and where education
was based on the Greek classics. The cultured classes in the. East
were proud of their Hellenic heritage, and treasured the historical
and mythological traditions of their cities. But here also centuries
of Roman rule had eliminated any traces of political separatism.
By the fourth century, if not earlier, the Greek-speaking inhabitants
of the Eastern provinces felt themselves to be what they had
legally been since 212 A.D., Roman citizens.
There is scarcely any sign of alienation between the Greek and
Latin halves of the empire, even after they had been politically
separated for generations. Arvandus, praetorian prefect of the
Gauls, in a letter to the king of the Visigoths spoke contemp-
tuously of Anthemius as 'the Greek emperor'; but he was a traitor,
condemned as such by his fellow senators. When Ricimer called
Anthemius an 'excitable Galatian' ('Galatam concitatum'), he
may have been trying to create prejudice against him as an oriental,
but if so he was unsuccessful; the senate and people of Rome, we
are told, stood firm on Anthemius' side. The mass of the Africans
and Italians welcomed the armies of Justinian, and if they came to
detest his fiscal agents there is no sign that they resented being
governed by Greeks.79
If we know something of the sentiments of the upper classes
from the literature which they produced, we have little clue to the
THE UNITY OF THE EMPIRE 1023
feelings of the humbler strata of the population, many of whom
still spoke their indigenous languages and were scarcely touched
by Roman culture. To their barbarian conquerors they were
Romans. In the laws of the Visigothic, Ostrogothic, Burgundian
and Frankish kings their non-German subjects, whether in Gaul,
Italy or Spain, are called Romani, and a Moorish chief, who in the
sixth century ruled a part of the former province of Mauretania
Caesariensis, styled himself 'rex Maurorum et Romanorum'. In
the East the inhabitants of the provinces which they conquered
were called Rumi by the Arabs. It seems likely that even a Syriac
or Celtic speaking peasant would have called himself a Roman, and,
if he cherished no strong feelings of loyalty to Rome, was not
animated by any hostile feelings towards her as an alien oppressor. 8o
The revolts of Britain and Armorica may have had some national
character, but the evidence is too slight to form a definite conclu-
sion. According to Zosimus, when in 408 the forces of the usurper
Constantine were engaged in Spain, the attacks of barbarians
from across the Rhine 'drove the inhabitants of the island of
Britain and some of the provinces of Gaul to the necessity of
revolting from the Roman empire and living on their own, no
longer obeying their laws: and the people of Britain took up
arms and fought for themselves and freed their cities from the
attacking barbarians. And the whole of Armorica and other
provinces of Gaul imitated the Britons and freed themselves in
this way, expelling the Roman governors and establishing their
own independent state.'Bl
It is to be noted that this movement was directed against a
usurper, and that Honorius gave it his blessing, 'writing letters
to the cities in Britain, urging them to defend themselves'.
Despite Zosimus' emphatic words it would seem that the Britons
and north-western Gauls were not rebelling against the empire,
but were driven to self-help against the barbarians by the inaction
of a usurper.B2
Ten years later in 417 Exuperantius was crushing an uprising in
Armorica in which slaves had reduced their masters to subjection.
There were further risings of Bacaudae in Armorica in 43 5-7 and
in 442. There is, however, no reason to connect these peasant
revolts with the movement of 408, and they were probably social
revolutions. The cities of Britain and Armorica were left very
much to their own devices in the last years of Valentinian's reign,
and became practically independent, but there is no sign that they
wished to break away. The Britons appealed for aid to Aetius in
or after 446, and the Armoricans fought with the Roman army
against Attila in 4 5 r. 83
A clue to the sentiments of the Egyptians is given by the history
written by John, Bishop of Niciu, about two generations after
the Arab conquest. As a monophysite Copt he might be expected
to display some national pride in Egypt and the Egyptians, and
some hostility to the Roman empire. In fact he writes from an
imperial standpoint, giving no special emphasis to Egyptian
affairs, except that he is better informed on them. He naturally
condemns those emperors who had lapsed from the orthodox
(that is, monophysite) faith, and especially those like Justinian
and Heraclius who had been persecutors. But he gives high praise
to the pious Anastasius and even to Tiberius Constantine, who
merely tolerated monophysitism. He does not rejoice in the
Arab conquest as a delivery from the Roman yoke, but laments it
as a chastisement inflicted by God upon the empire for the heresy of
Heraclius.s4
CHAPTER XXV
THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
T
HE sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 caused a tremendous shock
to Christians and pagans alike. J erome, when he heard the
news in Bethlehem, declared: 'When the brightest light on
the whole earth was extinguished, when the Roman empire was
deprived of its head, when, to speak more correctly, the whole
world perished in one city, then "I was dumb with silence. I held
my peace, even from good, and my sorrow was stirred".' Only a
decade earlier Claudian had written: 'There will never be an end
to the power of Rome,' and Ammianus had believed that 'as long
as there are men Rome will be victorious and will increase with
lofty growth'. The fall of Rome spelt the fall of the empire; it
even meant the end of the world. A century before Lactantius had
written: 'The fall and ruin of the world will soon take place, but
it seems that nothing of the kind is to be feared as long as the city
of Rome stands intact. But when the capital of the world has
fallen ... who can doubt that the end will have come for the affairs
of men and for the whole world? It is that city which sustains all
things.''
To pagans the explanation of the catastrophe was only too
obvious. The misfortunes of the empire had increased with the
growth of Christianity. The final disaster had come only a few
years after Theodosius the Great had closed the temples and banned
the worship of the gods. It was plain that the ancient gods by
whose favour Rome had climbed to universal power had with-
drawn their protection and were chastising the faithless Romans
who had abandoned their worship.
The Christians made several answers, none of them very con-
vincing. Orosius in his Historia contra Paganos set out to prove
that the history of Rome while she still worshipped the gods had
been one uninterrupted series of disasters, and that with the bar-
barians in Spain and Gaul exterminating one another and vying to
take service under the empire, things were now at last taking a turn
for the better. This was too perverse to carry conviction to any
reasonable man. Despite occasional misfortunes Rome had been
1025
1026 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
victorious and had won a great empire under the old dispensation.
Things did not get better, but went from bad to worse, and Salvian
a generation later took a quite different line in his de Gubernatione
Dei. The disasters of the empire, heargueg, W!!r<;J:n<2ill!.stisemenL ...
_ _iniJi_%ed ..
... m or s, eK . o .. J ... ... pQQ,t;, an ".t .. eJJ: .. .. t<L..
. !eYiving. the ... l\!g<m42Lthe
pictured the as perhaps uncouth
rigliteci'ils:The' refUgees whose homes had been plundere.rana---
btrrllt;-thefree men who had been carried off and sold into slavery,
the sacred virgins whom the Vandals had raped by the score,
cannot have found Salvian's arguments very convincing.
Augustine in the City of God used both these arguments, but
his main theme was different. It was true, he admitted, that in the
civitas terrena pagan Rome had prospered and the history of the
Christian empire had been calamitous. But what did the things of
this world matter in comparison with the spiritual world, the
civitas Dei? J-'?Jhe .. C,:.hristian.eatthly .. disasteJ:s .. were.indiffe;renJ,
..

ness was to be found in the life of the spirit here on earth, and in
all its fullness in the world to come.
In the eighteenth century the debate on the fall of the empire
was resumed, and it has gone on ever since. Rationalists like
Gibbon saw religion as a primary cause of its decline, but in a very
different way from the pagan and Christian controversialists of the
fifth century. Christianity in his view sapped the morale of the
empire, deadened its intellectual life and by its embittered con-
troversies undermined its unity. Other historians, according to the
temper of their times, have emphasised the empire's military decline,
its political or social weaknesses, or its economic decay.
All the historians who have discussed the decline and fall of the
Roman empire have been Westerners. Their eyes have been fixed
on the collapse of Roman authority in the Western parts and the
evolution of the medieval Western European world. They have
tended to forget, or to brush aside, one very important fact, that
the Roman empire, though it may have declined, did not fall in
the fifth century nor indeed for another thousand years. During
the fifth century, while the Western parts were being parcelled out
into a group of barbarian kingdoms, the empire of the East stood
its ground. In the sixth it counter-attacked and reconquered
Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths, and part
of Spain from the Before the end of the century, it is
true, much of Italy and Spam had succumbed to renewed barbarian
THE BARBARIAN,S 1027
attacks, and in the seventh the onslaught of the Arabs robbed the
empire of Syria, Egypt, and Mrica, and the Slavs overran the
Balkans. But in. Asia Minor the empire lived on, and later, re-
covering its strength, reconquered much territory that it had lost
in the dark days of the seventh century.
These facts are important, for they demonstrate that the empire
did not, as some modern historians have suggested, totter into its
grave from senile decay, impelled by a gentle push from the bar-
barians. Most of the internal weaknesses which these historians
stress were common to both halves of the empire. The East was
even more Christian than the West, its theological disputes far more
embittered. The East, like the West, was administered by a corrupt
and extortionate bureaucracy. The Eastern government strove as
hard to enforce a rigid caste system, tying the curiales to their cities
and the coloni to the soil. Land fell out of cultivation and was
deserted in the East as well as in the West. It may be that some of
these weaknesses were more accentuated in the West than in the
East, but this is a question which needs investigation. It may be
also that the initial strength of the Eastern empire in wealth and
population was greater, and that it could afford more wastage; but
this again must be demonstrated.
In one respect, however, the Eastern empire was demonstrably
better placed than the Western. It was strategically less vulnerable,
and was down to the end of the fifth century subjected to less
pressure from external enemies. This suggests that the simple but
rather unfashionable view that the barbarians played a considerable
part in the decline and fall of the empire may have some truth in
it. ..
The enfeeblement of the empire no doubt encouraged the barbarians
to win easy spoils. The devastations of the barbarians impoverished
and depopulated the frontier provinces, and their unceasing pressure
imposed on the empire a burden of defence which overstrained
its administrative machinery and its economic resources. But
directly or indirectly, it may be plausibly argued, barbarian attacks
probably played a major part in the fall of the West.
During the first two centuries of the Principate the empire held
its own against the barbarians with very little trouble. There was
a serious crisis under Marcus Aurelius, and from the reign of
Severus Alexander the imperial armies found increasing difficulty
in beating off attacks across the frontier. How far was this due to
increasing barbarian pressure? \:Ve know next to nothing of what
was happening in the forests and marshes of Germany and the
steppes of eastern Europe, but it is observable that in these areas
there were long periods of relative stability, broken only by peren-
nial border wars, and other periods of widespread restlessness.
Trouble generally started when a tribe, whether because it had
outgrown the means of subsistence in its homeland, or because
it was hard pressed by aggressive neighbours, or lured by stories
of richer lands far away which might be plundered or occupied,
decided to abandon its home and start on trek. Such a movement
had a snowball effect. Other tribes were excited and joined the
adventure: others again were displaced and forced to migrate
elsewhere; unless the movement was nipped in the bud, it tended
to proliferate over a wider and wider area.
Some such movement probably produced the violent irruption
of Gallic tribes into Italy in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and
into the Balkans and Asia Minor in the third. The Cimbri and
Teutones, whose migrations caused such turmoil at the end of the
second century B. C., are certainly a case in point. Caesar was able
to check a movement of the Helvetii before it gathered way. Then
for two centuries northern Europe was quiescent. We do not
know what caused the disturbance of the Quadi and Marcomanni
which gave Marcus Aurelius so much trouble, but in the third
century we know from their national legends of the great trek of
the Goths and other East German tribes from their homes round
the Baltic. They and the tribes that they set in motion broke into
the empire and were only beaten back after long struggles by the
great Illyrian emperors of the late third century, and barbarian
pressure on the Rhine and Danube remained heavy during the
fourth.
From the third quarter of the fourth century there appears a
new disturbing force, the Huns. Their advent produced panic and
turmoil throughout the German tribes. Fleeing before them the
Visigoths sought refuge within the empire and the Ostrogoths
trekked westward. It was without doubt the pressure of the Huns,
direct or indirect, that caused waves of Germanic tribes to flood
into Italy under Radagaesus and to sweep over the Rhine a few
years later. The Hunnic kingdom itself grievously afflicted the
empire until it broke up in 454, and in the wake of the Huns came
other Asiatic tribes, such as the A vars, who in their turn set in
motion the Slavs.
It is impossible to measure numerically the strength of the
attacking forces. Contemporaries certainly often grossly exagger-
ated tbe numbers of the barbarian hordes, and on the meagre and
for the most part unreliable evidence available it would seem that
THE BARBARIANS 1029
a tribal group such as the Vandals or the Visigoths could not put
into the field more than twenty or thirty "thousand fighting men.
To modern ears such figures seem negligible, but ip. relation to
the size of the armies which the empire could muster at any given
point they were formidable. Moreover it must be remembered
that the empire had to defend itself against a considerable number
of such groups, and that some major disasters, such as the great
breakthrough on the Rhine in 407, were the result of a combined
movement of several tribes. The difficulties of the defence were
increased by the anarchic state of the barbarian world. The move-
ments of the barbarians were entirely unpredictable; at any point
along hundreds of miles of frontier there might at any moment
flood a swarm of warriors which far outnumbered the troops
immediately available. Moreover the gaps in the front line were
always filled by newcomers; scarcely had the power of the Huns
been broken when the Avars appeared in the West, and less than
twenty years after Justinian's army had finally cleared the Ostro-
goths out of Italy the Lombards swarmed in."
Though we cannot gauge the numbers involved, we can, if we
compare the narratives of two historians who wrote on a similar
scale-Tacitus and Ammianus-sense the change between the first
and the fourth century A.D. In the Annals there are occasional
border disturbances, but on the whole the frontier armies have
very little to do except when an aggressive commander carries the
war into enemy territory. In the pages of Ammianus we see
Constantius II, Julian, Valentinian and Valens constantly engaged
in repelling an attack here or conducting a punitive expedition
there, and if for a moment their backs are turned, the barbarians
forthwith break in. And except for the last book, Ammianus'
history describes the period before the impact of the Huns pushed
the German tribes westwards and redoubled the pressure on the
Roman frontier.
The Persian empire under the Sassanid dynasty was certainly a
more formidable enemy than had been the Parthian empire in the
first two and a half centuries of the Principate. It was probably,
when it put its full strength into play, more formidable than any
but the largest concentrations of German tribes; the largest Roman
armies on record were mustered against Persia.
On the other frontiers the barbarians were a nuisance rather than
a menace, but everywhere the pressure seems to have increased. In
the diocese of Mrica, where we hear of very little fighting under
the Principate after the annexation of Mauretania by Claudius, the
Moorish tribes became increasingly aggressive from the end of the
third century and by the sixth were a constant menace. Cyrenaica,
!030 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
which had .ungarrisoned under the early empire, suffered
from heavy rruds m the fifth century. In Upper Egypt, which had
been adeq17ately prote<;ted. by half a dozen auxiliary units, a much
larger gamson found lt difficult to cope with growing activity of
the ?-Ud Blemmyes. Even. in the interior of the empire
the Isaur1an highlanders, who had g1ven no trouble since the early
first century, from the late third were a constant menace to the
surrounding provinces.
The brunt of the barbarian attack fell for obvious reasons on the
West. fourth century the Western emperor was generally
respons1ble f<;>r the defence of the whole length of the Rhine and
Danube frontier, except for the last 300 miles of the Danube's course.
Even in. the fifth the Eastern emperor took over
the Dac1an and f:iacedoruan the Western emperor still
had more than twice as long a frontier to guard. This put a constant
strain on resources of the \'17 est, and moreover presented
lt with a very difficult strategic problem. It was beyond the re-
sources of the \'\7 estern empire to contain a simultaneous attack
on the Rhine and the upper Danube, and when the front line was
breached by such a double assault, as it was in the early fifth century
there was no satisfactory second line of defence. The
emperor had less front to cover, and therefore less constant wear
and tear on his resources, and if the lower Danube was breached as
it often was, could and did hold the enemy at the Straits. The
defence of his capital, indeed, forced him to hold this line at all
costs, and adequate forces were always kept in reserve to guard
In the West the def7nce of Rome absorbed troops
which nnght from a purely strategical point of view have been
better employed guarding the Pyrenees or the straits of Gibraltar
arid the result was that when the Rhine frontier was breached
barbarian invaders surged on almost unchecked into Spain, and a
few years later were able to cross into Mrica.
The Eastern emperor was, it is true, responsible for the defence
of. the empire against the Persians, and when Persia was aggressive
this was a heavy b\'rden. J:?ut the PersiaJ?- kings had their own
troubles, dynastic disputes, mternal rebellions and the barbarian
pressure on their own frontier, and they generally pre-
ferred to keep the peace With Rome. There was a brief Persian
war .under in 297-8. were prolonged, but not
continuous, hosrilities from the accession of Constantius II in 3 3 7
to the defeat of Julian's great expedition in 363. Thereafter, apart
from some rather desultory fighting in Armenia under Valens and
two under Theodosius II in 421-2 and 440-2, there was
peace unt1lm 5 o2 Cavades attacked Anastasius.
POLITICAL WEAKNESSES I03I
In the 240 years which passed between the accession of Dio-
cletian and that of_Justinian there was thus a state of war between
Rome and Persia for less than forty, and in most of those forty years
there were no hostilities, but truces, official or unofficial, during
which negotiations were pursued. Moreover when peace was
arranged, there was genuine peace: Persia was a civilised power
which normally kept its bond and could control its subjects. For
most of the fourth century therefore and nearly all the fifth the
empire did not have to worry about its Eastern frontier. From
the beginning of the sixth century Persia, under a series of vigorons
and aggressive kings, Cavades (488-5 3 r), Chosroes I (5 31-79) and
Hormisdas IV ( 5 79-90) exercised heavy pressure on the empire,
but there were long spells of peace, from 507 to 527, from 531 to
540, from 562 to 577 and from 590 to 6o2, and between 545 and
5 62 there were a series of truces, partial or complete, and little
fighting of importance. Nevertheless the strain was severe, and
partly accounts for the debacle which followed the death ofMaurice.
All things considered it would appear that on all fronts the
empire was exposed to much greater pressure from the middle of
the third century, and that this pressure became yet more intense
with the advent of the Huns, and did not thereafter relax. It is
also plain that the Western empire bore much more than its fair
share of the burden and was much less favourably placed to make a
recovery when its first line of defence was broken. Within twenty-
five years of the great break-through on the Rhine, Italy was en-
circled by barbarian kingdoms in G.ml, Spain and Mrica, and the
struggle became hopeless. The Eastern emperors always had the
resources of Asia 11inor, Syria and Egypt on which to draw, and
could always hold any tribes that crossed the Lower Danube at
bay until they tired of ravaging Thrace and Illyricum and moved
on to less devastated areas. In this way the strength of the East
contribnted to the troubles of the West. The Visigoths under
Alaric moved West into Italy, having exhausted the possibilities of
Illyricum, and so did the Ostrogoths under Theoderic. Even
Attila tired of ravaging the Balkans and ultimately marched against
the West. They all realised that Constantinople was too tough a
nut to crack.
Some critics have stressed the evil consequences of the division
of the empire, particularly after 395, and have urged that if its
whole resources had been pooled the Western fronts could have
been held. It is true enough that during Stilicho's ascendancy
friction between the Eastern and the Western governments mat-
erially aided Alaric's ambitions, and that thereafter the Eastern
emperors only gave spasmodic help to the West. A few regiments
were sent by Theodosius II to Honorius' aid in Italy; the usurper
John was crushed and Valentinian III installed; three expeditions
were sent against the Vandals in Mrica, the last on a very big scale,
and Anthemius was furnished with some troops by Leo. Much
more might have been done if one emperor had ruled the whole
empire, but it is doubtful whether one man could have effectively
controlled both the East and the West in the political and military
conditions of the time, when communications were so slow and
crises so frequent and so sudden. Whenever by any chance the
control of the empire did devolve upon a single ruler, he always
in fact delegated the government of a part to a colleague or coll-
eagues, equal or subordinate to himself. When Constantine had
eliminated all his rivals, he divided the administration of the empire
between his sons and nephews as Caesars. When Constantius II
moved west to attack the usurper Magnentius, he left the East
in charge of the Caesar Gallus, and when he moved east again he
entrusted the defence of the Gauls to the Caesar Julian. When
Valentinian was elected the army forthwith demanded that he
appoint a colleague. Theodosius I left his elder son Arcadius in
charge of the East when he marched west against successive
usurpers, and divided the empire at his death between his two sons.
It seems to have been regarded as axiomatic that two emperors at
least were required to cope with the dangers which threatened on
the Rhine, the Danube and the Euphrates.
It is moreover arguable that the resources of the Eastern parts
might have been exhausted, and the West have none the less been
lost. When Justinian did reconquer Mrica and Italy he seems to
have found them a heavy burden, and though Africa ultimately
proved to be an asset under Heraclius, Italy was a constant drain
on the empire's resources. Nor did the Western dioceses find
unitary government an unmixed blessing. The emperors at Con-
stantinople naturally gave the Eastern and Danube fronts priority,
and starved Italy and Mrica of troops and money.
The constitution of the empire has been criticised for its failure
to provide a clear rule for the succession to the throne, and thus
permitting, if not encouraging, usurpations. For the third century
the charge has some substance, but from the time of Dioc!etian the
college of emperors provided the continuity required. When a
n;ember of the college died, his colleague or colleagues appointed
hls successor: they could also nominate their successors in advance.
Only if the college became extinct did the choice of an emperor
POLITICAL WEAKNESSES
devolve upon the senate and the army. From Constantine onwards
the hereditary was de facto followed. It evidently accorded
with the sentimet1t of the army and made for stability, though it
produced minorities and incompetent rnlers. Unfortunately dyn-
asties were short-lived: those of Constantine and Valentinian I
lasted only two generations, those of Theodosius and Justin I
three. Neverilieless these families built up a certain tradition of
loyalty.
It is true that ilie empire too often dissipated its strength in
civil wars, but in this respect its record from ilie fourth century
was far better than it had been in the third. Dioc!etian maintained
internal peace for twenty years, broken only by two revolts-those
of Carausius in Britain and of Domitius Domitianus in Egypt.
After his deaili there was an orgy of civil wars until Constantine
finally conquered Licinius in 324 Thereafter the record of the
Eastern parts is strikingly good. Apart from the rather feeble
attempt of Procopius to challenge V alens there was no rebellion
until the reign of Zeno, who lacked both dynastic and personal
prestige. He had to face three revolts, those of Basiliscus, Marcian
and Illus' protege Leontius. He mastered them all, but left Anasta-
sius the task of reducing the Isaurians to obedience: Anastasius
later, by his unpopular religious policy, supplied a pretext for the
rebellion of Vitalian. Mter this there was no attempt at usurpation
until the mutiny which brought Phocas to the throne.
In the East not only were legitimate emperors rarely chal-
lenged but when an emperor had not already designated his succes-
sor, an election was held in a constitutional manner, and its result
accepted. The record of the West is by no means so good. Con-
stantine II and Constans fought one another, Magnentius murdered
Constans, Julian usurped the title of Augustus, Magnus Maximus
rebelled against Gratian and Arbogast put up Eugenius against
Valentinian II. Under Honorius there was a crop of tyrants-
Attains, Constantine and Jovinus, and after his death John. Mter
the death of V alentinian III emperors were set up and deposed
with bewildering rapidity. In Africa there were a series of local
pretenders-Firmus, Gildo, Heraclian, Boniface.
All these usurpations provoked civil wars, some minor, some
of major importance, Several involved the forces of the East;
Theodosius the Great had to subdue Maximus and Eugenius,
Theodosius II John, and in all three cases the struggle was severe
and the losses heavy, especially to ilie Western armies, which
were defeated. It is hard to see why rebellions were so much more
rife in the West than in the East. One reason may be that in the
West ilie incompetence of a feeble emperor was more glaringly
revealed because he had greater difficulties to face. The disasters
of Hdnorius' reign invited usurpers to take over the defence of
the empire; his equally feeble brother and nephew did not h:lVe
their incompetence put to the test. But probably the prine1pal
reason for the greater stability of the Eastern empire was that
monarchy was more deeply rooted there, and respect for royal
authority had a longer tradition behind it. The Greek East
lived under kings from time immemorial, and had promptly hailed
Augustus and his successors as kings.
Apart from usurpations, which were due to the ambition of
individualstome modern historians have seen a growth of regional
or national sentiment in the later empire, and a tendency of out-
lying provinces to break away from the empire/The evidence f<;>r
such a view is very tenuous. There is the alleged revolt of Britam
and Armorica in 408, which was more probably an attempt at
self help, when the emperor, who incidentally was the usurper
Constantine, failed to do his duty and protect his subjects from
the barbarians. There is the election of A virus by the senators of
Gaul; but A virus had no intention of founding an imperium Gall-
iarum, but promptly marched to Rome. The revolts of Firmus
and Gildo have also been regarded as nationalist risings because
their leaders came of a Moorish princely family. But there is
nothing in the history of the family which suggests that its mem-
bers were not merely ambitious careerists. Gildo aided the Roman
government to crush his brother Firmus, and was himself subdued
by his brother Mascazel.'
The only other evidence adduced for the theory is the virulence
and stubborness of certain regional heresies, notably Donatism in
Africa and monophysitism in Egypt and Syria. That local loyalty
played a large part in the devotion of many Mricans to the Donatist
cause and of most Egyptians to the monophysite faith may be
granted; the case of Syria is much more disputable. It is also true
that the Donatists and monophysites execrated those emperors who
persecuted them, and violently resisted attempts to impose catholic
or orthodox bishops upon them. This resistance certainly imposed
an additional burden upon the imperial armies; very few orthodox
patriarchs of Alexandria could be installed or hold their own with-
out the backing of several regiments of troops. But evidence is
entirely lacking that either sect envisaged secession from the
empire, or gave welcome or support to the empire's enemies. If
the Donatists had supported the Vandals, we should certainly have
heard of it from Victor Vitensis and the other Mrican catholics
who told of the tribulations of the faithful under the Vandal kings.
We know from Coptic sources that the Persian invaders of Egypt
T
'
I
[_
MILITARY DEFECTS 1035
under Heraclius were remembered not as liberators bqt as scourges
of God, and John of Niciu took a view the .A-rabs. The
only religious minority which showed active hostihty to the Roman
government. was the Jews, seem to have been goaded
into opposition only by Justiruan s ruthless J
of Naples were the backbone of the city's resistance to Behsarms,
and the Jews of the East took advantage of the Persian
under Phocas to turn upon their Christian oppressors and rejoiced
in the defeat of Heraclius' armies by the Arabs.
6
The army of the later empire has been criticised on many counts.
On two at any rate the government ?annat be of
negligence. In the first place lt en<;>rmously. the s1Ze .of
the army. Reliable figures are lackmg, it iS ce:tam that p10-
cletian increased numbers very substantially, and it seems
that before the end of the fourth century the army twice as
large as it had been in the second.[J'his was no .mean achievement,
but the recruitment of so large a force, despite the free use of
barbarian soldiers, put a heavy strain on the m.anpower the
empire, while its maintenance greatly overtaxed its ec_onom1c re-
sources, i In the second place, in order to meet the reqmrements of
a situation where mobility was essential, the _imperial go:rernment
greatly increased the proportion of cavalry- to infantry. This change
added substantially to the expense of mamtenance: for the fodder
of a horse cost as much as the rations of a man. .
How far these huge forces were. t<;> the best advantage iS
questionable, but the general strategic prme1ple s?und. Under
the Principate the whole army had been evenly dist:i?uted round
the frontier and there was no reserve. If a maJor cnsis developed
or if offensive operations were a temporary concen-
tration of troops was formed by detachments
the quiet sectors of the front. In the relatively peaceful condit.ions
which prevailed under the Principate such a system was possible;
its success indeed is a proof that pressure on. the fron.uer cannot
have been heavy. When pressure m third
the defence of the empire broke down. D10clet1an,
to the old strategy endeavoured to restore the situatmn by
greatly strengthening the frontier forces, eyen an. army of
double the size could not have manned the frontier m sufficiex:t force
to hold the much heavier and more frequent
empire had now to Constant.ine was certainly wise 1n
developing the impenal cotJtttatus mto a substantial mobile
LL
ro;6 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
reserve, which could be rushed to any sector which had been
breached.
Successive emperors increased the size of the comitatus, but its
unity was not maintained after Constantine's death. The division
of the field army into several groups was partly a consequence of
the political division of the empire, but it was also dictated by
sound strategic reasons. The empire was too large and communi-
cations were too slow for a single reserve to cover all the fronts,
and it proved necessary to create regional reserves for the Rhine,
the upper and the lower Danube and the Eastern frontier, in addition
to the central reserves at the disposal of the emperors. The system
was sound enough in principle, but it was in the fifth century
carried to excess in the \'V est, where regional reserves were formed
for Africa, Spain and Britain, and became too rigid in the East,
where the army of Oriens, which for the long periods of peace
with Persia had little work to do, does not seem to have been used
for the pressing needs of the Danube front. In both East and
West moreover the regiments of the field army tended increasingly
to be used for garrison duty in the interior and ceased to be mobile.
By withdrawing the best units from the frontier to serve in
the comitatus Constantine somewhat weakened the !imitanei from
their peak strength under Diocletian, but the frontier armies at the
end of the fourth century remained considerably more numerous
than they had been under the Principate, when they formed the
sole defence of the empire. They could no longer be expected to
withstand major attacks, but they remained essential if the provinces
were to be protected against constant small-scale raids. Without
them the barbarians would have extended their ravages further
and further into the interior, and the empire would have been
destroyed by gradual attrition.
On the quality of the imperial armies it is difficult to judge.
Vegetius repeatedly laments their degeneracy in his day, but he
was an antiquarian and a !audator temporis acti. As all readers of
Tacitus know, the Roman army of the Principate was not impeccable.
The troops sometimes mutinied; they sometimes panicked and
fled before the enemy; they were very prone to ravage a friendly
countryside and to sack Roman towns when occasion offered.
Discipline was slack in legions stationed in towns, and the men
were allowed to neglect their military duties and follow civil
avocations. Centurions used their authority to extort money from
their men. Nevertheless the army of the Principate was on the
whole a very efficient force. Similar abuses flourished in the army of
the later empire, almost certainly on a larger scale, but it does not
necessar,Uy follow that its fighting quality was seriously impaired,
MILITARY DEFECTS
1037
In two respects the later Roman army was superior to that of
the Principate. In the first place it was on the whole better officered.
Under the Principate both commanders of regiments und generals
of armies had been in the main civilians holding temporary com-
missions, and few of them remained long enough in their posts to
acquire experience. In the later empire most officers were pro-
fessional soldiers. Regimental commanders were not uncommonly
promoted from the ranks, and generals were usually chosen from
officers who had proved their ability in command of regiments.
In the second place the later Roman army was remarkably obedient
to its commanders, and did not exploit its position to hold the
government to ransom. Though much worse off than under the
Principate the troops never tried to extort an increase of pay or
even a larger donative from the government: the rates of both
remained static for over three centuries. It was only when under
Justinian their pay fell into long arrears that some units mutinied
or deserted, and the military rebellions under Maurice were pro-
voked by his attempts to reduce pay and make the conditions of
service more onerous.?
The !imitanei, having become second-class troops, certainly
declined in efficiency. They received recruits of inferior quality
and were too often commanded by officers whose main objective
was to make money. It was among them that administrative abuses
were rampant, and the government found it difficult to maintain
their numbers and discipline. Their deterioration has however
been greatly exaggerated by modern historians, and in the sixth
century the government not only thought it worth while to main-
tain them on the Danubian and Eastern fronts, but tried to recreate
them in the reconquered provinces of Mrica.s
The field army, on the other hand, received the best recruits
and officers of better quality. To judge by its battle record it re-
mained a tolerably efficient fighting force. Under good leadership
Roman armies could still defeat barbarian hordes which far out-
numbered them, as the victories of Stilicho over Alaric and Rada-
gaesus and of Belisarius over the Vandals and Ostrogoths amply
demonstrate.
Both in antiquity and in modern times the emperors have been
severely criticised for relying to excess on German troops and
German officers. Stilicho, after his fall, was denounced as a traitor.
Synesius, in his address to Arcadius, enlarges on the folly of en-
trusting the defence of the flock to the very wolves who raven
against it, and eloquently urges the formation of an exclusively
national army of Roman Citizens.
A study of the history of the empire suggests that both criticisms
are ill-founded. Some German generals were politically ambitious
and like Stilicho or Gainas held, or aspired to hold, supreme power
under a faineant emperor, or even, like Arbogast and Ricimer in
the West or Aspar in the East, put up puppet emperors; some like
the last named coveted the purple for their sons. But generals of
Roman birth, like Constantius or Aetius or Illus, did the like, and
no career officer of German origin-as opposed to tribal chieftains
like Alaric and the two Theoderics who extorted high military
commands from the government-is ever known to have betrayed
the interests of the empire to his countrymen. The same applies
to the rank and file. There is no hint in our sources that Germans
recruited into the regular army and properly administered and
disciplined were ever unreliable. The trouble was caused when,
from the time of Theodosius the Great, barbarian tribes which had
forced their way into the empire were given the status of federates.
The Roman government was perhaps unwise in inviting refugee
tribes to settle within the empire, as did Marcian after the fall of
the Hunnic empire, but in general it was making the best of a
bad job when it tried to use as federates tribes which had broken
in and which it had not the strength to expel or destroy.
9
An attempt has been made to prove that the fall of the empire in
the West was due to the decay of trade and industry. The argument
runs that in the early Principate Italy had flourished by manufac-
turing and exporting products such as Arretine ware to the
provinces. Later such products were manufactured locally in the
provinces, and Italian industry decayed and trade withered away.
Finally the provincial industries, unable to expand beyond the
frontiers, themselves decayed. It is difficult to see the force of
this argument, assuming that the facts were as alleged. There
never had been a large-scale export trade beyond the frontier;
imports had always been paid for maiuly in coin, and their volume
was hardly significant in relation to the wealth of the empire. In
so far as industry was decentralised within the frontiers of the
empire there was no net loss: what Italian manufacturers lost,
provincial manufacturers gained. If, as would appear, goods could
be as cheaply and efficiently made in the provinces as in Italy,
there was in fact a net saving in that the costs of transport were
eliminated. Trade in manufactured articles may have declined, as
did trade in certain agricultural products; as viticulture was ex-
tended to new areas, the wine trade must have declined. But trade
is not a good thing in itself; it adds to the community's wealth
T
I
ECONOMIC DECLINE
I039
only in so far as it supplies areas with goods w.hich they lack or
can only produce at high cost.
10
In fact it is very doubtful whether there ever had been any
large-scale inter-provincial trade. The evidence suggests that the
production of one commodity of basic importance, clothing, had
always been decentralised. Workaday clothes for the poor and
sound medium fabrics suitable for army uniforms seem always to
have been woven locally in every city and indeed village, and it
was only silk and very high-quality woollens and linens that were
manufactured in a limited number of towns and exported to distant
markets."
There continued to be a brisk trade in such high-grade fabrics
down to the seventh century from end to end of the Mediterranean,
and there is no sign that the demand for other luxury goods dimin-
ished, or that supply fell off. There may have been some contrac-
tion of the market for medium priced and cheap goods owing to
the impoverishment of the peasantry and the urban working class
and the lower strata of the curiales. But the decline of trade and
industry, in so far as there was a decline, was a result and not a
cause of a general economic recession. Finally it was of v ~ y
marginal importance. Even in the Eastern parts, where therr
importance was admittedly greater and their decay less marked, trade
and industry made a minute contribution to the national income.
12
That there was some recession in the major industry of the
empire--ilgriculture-cannot be disputed. The laws about agri
deserti prove that land once cultivated was being abandoned from
the third century to the sixth, and the few figures available show
that in some areas where conditions were particularly unfavourable,
such as Africa, the loss by the fifth century was enormous, up to
50 per cent., and that in others which there is no reason to think
exceptional it amounted to some IO per cent. or I 5 per cent. The
decline may have been in some areas due to exhaustion of the soil
by overcropping, in others to the progress of denudation: some-
times it may have been due to lack of labour. Some of the loss
was attributable to the direct pressure of the barbarians, whose
continual razzias made cultivation unprofitable if not impracticable
in the exposed border provinces. The principal cause of the pro-
gressive abandonment of land was, however, as contemporaries
held, the heavy2_nsLiJ:!<;.reasiQgJo;;dA:l(tantion,, which on land of
marginat va1ue absorbed so much of the rent that landlords could
make no profit, and might incur a loss. In so far as the high tax-
ation was caused by the heavy military expenditure of the empire,
the decline of agriculture was thus indirectly caused by barbarian
pressure."
I040 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
The extent of the decline must not be exaggerated. Taken as a
whole the area was not very large, and the loss in yield was less,
since it was the least productive land that was abandoned, and more-
over much land officially registered as uncultivated continued to
be worked by landlords or local authorities responsible for the
taxes, in order that the product should at least help to cover them.
Against the areas abandoned must also be set some areas which
were brought under cultivation for the first time during the same
period. It must be emphasised that there was no general agri-
cultural decline; land of good and medium quality continued to
pay high taxes, yield high rents and command high prices.
Depopulation has been regarded as a major factor in the decline
of the empire. Unfortunately our information is so vague, and
facts and figures are so sparse that it is impossible to calculate what
the population of the empire was at any date, or how much it
declined, if, as is very probable if not certain, it did decline. All
we can do is to note certain demographic trends, and speculate
about their causes."
The population of the empire undoubtedly was, and always had
been, very small by modern standards. Figures for the annona
suggest that the inhabitants of Rome numbered between half and
three-quarters of a million in the early fourth century and that
Constantinople had reached about the same figure in the sixth.
Alexandria, the third city of the empire, was to judge by its annona
half the size of Constantinople in the sixth century. Libanius gives
the figure of I 5 o,ooo and John Chrysostom 2oo,ooo for Antioch,
probably the fourth city of the empire. These figures for the
largest towns, however, even if they were reliable, are not of much
use in estimating a population which was predominantly rural, and
figures for the rural population are even more difficult to find. At
the end of the first century the population of Egypt, excluding
Alexandria, numbered, according to a reliable source, seven and a
half millions, and it was certainly not greater under the later em-
pire. For the Civitas Aeduorum in the reign of Constantine we have
a precise figure: the number of capita registered in a recent census
was, according to a contemporary local orator, 3 2,ooo. The orator's
words clearly imply that this figure included women, but not
young' children (by analogy with other parts of the empire we may
exclude those under twelve or fourteen). We must then add half
as much again for the children, reaching a total of about 5 o,ooo.
Unfortunately we do not know whether the Gallic capitatio included
1
DEPOPULATION
1041
the urban as well as the rural population. The Civitas Aeduorum
was one of the larger of the hundred and twenty. cities of Gaul:
the exact extent of its territory at this date is not certiin but has
been plausibly calculated at one forty-eighth of the area comprised
between the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic ocean.
The total rural population of this area, perhaps its total population,
would then have been less than two and a half millions.
15
We know something of the age distribution of the population
from tombstones. Their evidence is incomplete, for they exclude
the very poor, who could not afford tombstones; women also are
less well recorded than men, and on children the evidence is so
incomplete as to be useless. There are minor variations between
different areas and between town and country, but broadly speaking
the same pattern emerges everywhere, and there is no significant
difference between the Principate and the later empire. This
pattern is markedly different from that of modern European
countries, and coincides very closely with that of India at the
beginning of this century. The death-rate was uniformly high at all
ages from ten, below which we have no adequate data; judging by
modern analogies the infant and child death-rate would have been
very much greater than that of adults. The female death-rate was
substantially higher than the male, especially in the child-bearing
years. Thus in Africa, of Ioo boys of ten 8 5 survived to 22, 74 to p,
58 to 42, 47 to j2, and 36 to 62. For girls the corresponding per-
centages were 73, 54, 47, 39 and 28. A population with so high a
death-rate would have required a very high birth-rate even to
maintain its numbers, and modern populations of a similar
structure have in fact very high birth rates.
16
Though it is at first sight startling that the population of the
Roman empire should have been similar to that of India fifty
years ago, iljis on reflection not unnatural. Conditions were basic-
ally similar. \.)'he Roman empire was a country of peasants, who
lived near subsistence leveg Their resistance to disease must have
been weakened by chroruc malnutrition. Medical science was
primitive and doctors few. The threat of famine was always near.
Such populations are normally very resilient, rapidly recovering
from any but the severest checks caused by massacres, famines or
epidemics. They tend generally to increase up to the maximum
number that the country can support at subsistence level. The
ceiling is fixed naturally not only by the gross amount of food
available, but by its distribution; if more than the minimum is
consumed by some sections of the population, the number which
can be supported at subsistence level will be reduced.
There are many indications that there was a chronic shortage
of manpower in the later empire. It must have been for this reason
that the government forbade workers in essential industries-
miners, armourers, weavers and dyers in the state factories, and
above all agricultural workers-to leave their occupations, re-
claimed them when they strayed from them, an4-m.ropell.:d-their__
fgthers?.occuJ;>ation._. The labour shortage
lSII:tc)sfmariifest on the land. It 1s plam that landlords were peren-
nially short of tenants to cultivate their land. They were always
ready to accept barbarian prisoners of war as co!oni. They would
rather pay 2 5 or 30 solidi, more than the normal price of a slave,
than give up a eo/onus as a recruit to the army. They hunted down
their cofoni when they escaped, and despite all penalties they wel-
comed fugitive coioni from other estates. The laws tying cofoni
the soil were never relaxed, but were, on the contrary, tightened.
Anastasius tied free tenants to their farms if they stayed more tha
thirty years. When Justinian declared the son of a free woman by
a coionus adscripticius to be free, he was bombarded by protests
from landowners, who declared that their estates were being
deserted. The shortage of labour on the land was not, so far as we
can see, due to a movement from the country to the towns: the
movement was rather in the opposite direction. Cofoni normally,
the laws imply, moved to another farm if they left their own.
Miners and urban craftsmen often had to be reclaimed from the
land.
17
This of course does not necessarily mean that the population
shrank. A labour shortage may be caused either by a decline in
the supply or by an increase in the demand for manpower, and in
the later empire there were greater demands for manpower by the
church, the civil service and above all the army. It may seem absurd
to suggest that an army of 6 5 o,ooo men could have strained the
manpower resources of an empire which stretched from the Western
Ocean to the Euphrates, especially as a substantial number of the
were barbarians from outside the frontiers; and as compared
wrth those of the army the demands of the civil service and the
church were negligible. But it must not be forgotten how sparsely
inhabited the vast area of the empire was by modern standards.
Increase of the demand may therefore have made a significant
contribution to the labour shortage from which the later Roman
empire suffered.
There is however proof that the population did sink. As we
have seen progressively less land was cultivated, and less food
:nust therefore have been produced. The empire never either
Imported foodstuffs or produced a surplus for export. Since con-
sumption per head could hardly sink for the mass of the population,
DEPOPULATION
1043
who were already near subsistence level, the population must have
grown smaller. There was moreover an increasing maldistribution
of the diminishing quantity of food which was produced. Soldiers
enjoyed ample rations-their consumption was perhaps twice as
much as that of poor peasants-and civil servants and most of
the clergy were at least as well fed. As the army, the civil service
and the clergy increased in numbers, the proportion of the total
amount which was left for the mass of the population sank, and
their numbers must have sunk correspondingly.
The reasons for the decline are more difficult to determine. There
was a great plague under Marcus Aurelius, which recurred from
time to time during the third century: outbreaks are recorded under
Gall us in 2 5 I, under Gallienus about 26 I, and under Claudius in
271. It is probable that this plague had spent its force by Dio-
cletian's reign. No other great plague is recorded-and such events
are noted even in the baldest chronicles-until the bubonic plague
which swept the empire in Justinian's reign from 542 onwards.l8
There were of course many local disasters which reduced the
population. Barbarian raiders sometimes massacred the inhabi-
tants, but more often they carried them off; and though many
such prisoners no doubt died in exile, more were ransomed or
sold as slaves within the empire. Barbarian devastation produced
famines, which were followed by epidemics. Famines also occurred
from natural causes, droughts or invasions of locusts, and these
too were often followed by epidemics. Modern analogies, however,
suggest that a population of the type of that of the Roman empire
should have had a very high birth rate, and ought to have recovered
rapidly from such temporary and local losses.
One is driven to the conclusion that the population dwindled
because, when they had paid their rent and taxes and other exactions,
the peasantry had not enough left to rear sufficient children to
counterbalance the very high death-rate. What evidence we have
supports this hypothesis. We know that the land tax which the
peasant proprietor paid had reached over a third of his gross
product by Justinian's reign, and that the rents paid by the tenant
farmer were substantially more, in Egypt at least half. Poor
parents were often driven to infanticide. In 3 I 5 Constantine ordered
the publication throughout Italy of a law 'which may withhold the
hands of parents from murder'; any parent who produced 'a child
which he could not rear because of poverty' was to be forthwith
issued with food and clothing, 'since the raising of a newborn
infant does not admit delay'. The sale of newborn infants had
become so common that, contrary to the principles of Roman law,
it was officially permitted by Diocletian's day, and the poor, despite
!044 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
the law, commonly sold or pledged their older children. The
practice is alluded to by Constantine in another alimentary law, and
is frequently mentioned in hagiographical tales and in the papyri.
Cassiodorus states that there was a regular market for peasants'
children at a great fair in southern Italy.l"
Perhaps the most significant sign, however, of the poverty of
the peasantry, and of the reason for it, is the fact that in times of
famine they flocked to the towns for bread, and were often fed
from stocks held by the government or the landowners. So ruthless
and efficient was the collection of rents and taxes that, however
poor the crop, the quantity due to the state and the landlords was
carried off to town, and the peasants might be left with little or
nothing for their own needs. 2o
How many children died of malnutrition or deficiency diseases
we have no means of estimating, but the record of nine complete
peasant households preserved in the early fourth-century census
lists of western Asia Minor suggests that few children survived
and also that the general mortality rate was high and that men
married late in life. There is only one fair-sized family, a man
(aged 65) with a wife and three sons and one daughter, ranging
from 6 to I4. A widower of 56 has two sons under four years of
age, he also keeps a woman of 48 and a boy of three, labelled
orphans or foundlings. A couple aged 30 have a three-years-old
son and keep two other boys, one apparently a nephew. An older
couple (aged 6o and 52) have a son and a daughter. A widow has
an adult son and a daughter of eleven. A widow of 20 has a baby
girl of two. A widower has one son of II, and another, aged 40,
a son of 20; he also keeps a woman of 30, perhaps a sister, perhaps
a second wife. Finally there is a bachelor of 20, living alone.
21
The condition of the urban poor, though they were much more
lightly taxed, was no better. They too were frequently, almost
regularly, it would seem, driven to sell their children to pay the
collatio lustralis. They too in times of shortage had to be supplied
with cheap bread at the expense of the city authorities. It seems
unlikely that they could have reared large families, and in towns, as
the statistics drawn from tombstones show, the general rate of
mortality was substantially higher than in the country. Though
in some parts of the West, notably Italy and Gaul, there was an
exodus of urban workers to the countryside, the reason was not
that the population of the towns had grown, but that urban industry
was on the decline and there was not enough employment even
for a shrinking number of workers.
Neither the poverty of the peasantry and the urban working
class, nor the decline of the population, must be exaggerated,
IDLE MOUTHS
1045
There were many prosperous peasants and craftsmen and many
more who led a tolerable existence. It would, appear
that as a whole they could not rear enough children to maintain
the population against the very high death-rate prevailing. The
population fairly certaiuly sank, but if the decrease may be measured
by the amount of land abandoned, it was not in most areas cata-
strophic.
The basic economic weakness of the empire was that too few
producers supported too many idle mouths. This state of affairs
was in part an inheritance from the Principate, in part imposed by
increasing barbarian pressure, in part again due to the incompetence
of the government, in part finally to the new religion which the
empire adopted.
The later empire inherited a number of extravagances from the
more prosperous days of the Principate. It still provided a free
ration of bread (and of pork in season) to 12o,ooo citizens of Rome:
the number was only about half that of the plebs frumentaria under
the Principate, but Constantine instituted a similar free issue to
8o,ooo citizens of Constantinople, and here the number of bene-
ficiaries was subsequently increased. A few major provincial cities
enjoyed a similar privilege, Alexandria, Antioch and perhaps
Carthage; the first of these received it from Diocletian.
22
Another body of idle consumers inherited from the Principate
was the senatorial order. Though numerically small it was im-
mensely rich, and absorbed a disproportionate share of the national
income. Each senator directly maintained an army of slaves to
minister to his wants, and indirectly employed a great number of
artists, craftsmen and merchants to supply him with luxury goods.
The later emperors made little attempt to reduce the wealth of the
senatorial order by special taxation, and weakly granted it fiscal
privileges. They also vastly increased the numbers of the order,
and lavishly enriched its members, old and new, by allowing them
to make huge illicit profits from the offices which they held, and
by bestowing upon them extravagant gifts of gold and land. The
huge and ever-growing wealth which the aristocracy enjoyed was
in the main derived from the estates which they inherited, bought
or received as gifts from the crown, and was a direct charge on the
peasantry.
23
Under the Principate the local aristocracies of the cities had con-
stituted a second class of rentiers, far larger numerically but in-
dividually much less wealthy than the senatorial order. This class
shrank both in numbers and in wealth under the later empire, as
its richer members moved up into the senatorial aristocracy and
its poorer members sold their estates, usually to the imperial
aristocracy, while others found their way into the civil service,
the church or the professions. The land which the curial aristoc-
racy had held under the Principate thus partly went to swell the
estates of the senatorial order and partly provided unearned in-
comes to the professional middle class, while part was still held by
the surviving curiales. It still contributed to the maintenance of
economically idle mouths, whatever its vicissitudes,24
The later empire also inherited from the Principate a professional
standing army and civil service. It doubled the size of the former
and vastly expanded the latter. For these increases in the number
of idle mouths the pressure of the barbarians was largely respon-
sible, directly or indirectly. The empire was obliged to maintain
far larger armed forces, and the increased strain put on its fiscal
and administrative system by the maintenance of a much bigger
army goes far to explain the expansion of the civil service. It must
be admitted, it is true, that the government did not make the most
efficient use of its military expenditure, allowing too much of it to
be absorbed by the peculations of the officers, and wasting too
many troops on internal security. It must also be admitted that it
allowed the numbers of the civil service to expand beyond the real
needs of the administration, and its emoluments, licit and illicit, to
grow inordinately. Nevertheless, however efficiently the govern-
ment had used its resources, it would have been obliged to burden
the economy of the empire with a greatly increased army to resist
the barbarians, and a larger civil service to administer it and provide
for its multifarious requirements.
Finally the Christian church imposed a new class of idle mouths
on the resources of the empire. The pagan gods had, it is true,
owned some land, whose revenue helped to maintain their temples
and to support their cult, but except in Egypt and at a few famous
shrines its amount was small, and nowhere outside Egypt did a
large body of endowed priests exist. The Christian church from
the. time of Constantine accumulated ever-growing endowments in
land, and from their rents and from the fitstfruits of the faithful
maintained an increasing number of full-time stipendiary clergy.
By the sixth century the bishops and clergy had become far more
numerous than the administrative officers and civil servants of the
empire, and were on the average paid at substantially higher rates.
In addition to the clergy there were many thousands of monks
and hermits. Not all of these were idle mouths. The inmates of
the Pachomian houses of Egypt produced a surplus, and many
IDLE MOUTHS
monks and hermits just earned their keep. But a large number
lived on the alms of the peasantry, and as time went on more and
more monasteries acquired landed endowments which enabled
their inmates to devote themselves entirely to their spiritual duties."'
None of these classes was economically productive. All of them
drew the bulk of their incomes in one form or another from the
land, by way of rents, the land tax or firstfruits. Most of them
enjoyed a standard of living higher than that of the peasantry.
Some, like the richer senators and the best-endowed bishops, had
vast revenues; even the humblest, common soldiers, lower civil
servants, the lesser clergy and the monks were for the most part
substantially better off than the peasantry. The burden proved too
heavy for agriculture to bear. The higher rate of taxation led to
the progressive abandonment of marginal land once cultivated, and
many of the peasants, after paying their rents or taxes, had too
little food left to rear their children, and the number of the pro-
ducers thus slowly shrank.
In estimating the burden one must remember that the Roman
empire was technologically as backward as medieval Europe, and
in some important aspects more so. Spinning was done with the
primitive distaff and spindle, weaving on hand looms. Pottery was
turned on the wheel, metal work hammered out on the anvil. In
agriculture so simple a device as the wheelbarrow had not been
invented; since the horse collar had not been discovered, the ox, a
very slow beast, was used for ploughing. The crops were reaped by
hand with the sickle; Palladius indeed mentions a reaping machine
propelled by oxen, which was already known to Pliny, but it was
very wasteful of grain, and was only used on the great Gallic
estates, where weather conditions might make speed essential.
26
Some other mechanical devices, invented in the fitst century B.c.
or earlier, were more commonly used in the later empire. The
Apions supplied wheeled machines by the score to their tenants
for raising water; these were probably sakkias, driven by oxen,
which saved the long hours of human labour required by the shaduf
(still commoner than the sakkia in Egypt). Water mills for grinding
grain, still a curiosity in the reign of Augustus, had become more
common during the third century: Diocletian, in his tariff, fixed
prices for the construction of hand, donkey, horse and water
mills (250, I2jO, IjOO and 2000 denarii respectively), and Palladius
in his handbook on agriculture recommends the last. Rome, which
was in the first and probably the second centuries dependent on
donkey mills, had, by the fourth century, gone over to water mills.
Nevertheless, to judge by paucity of archaeological remains and of
allusions in literature, and the absence of any rules on water rights
in the law, water mills cannot have been very common. In the
Mediterranean area suitable streams with a perennial even flow are
not very common; at Rome waterpower was obtained from the
aqueducts and the Tibet was only harnessed by an ingenious device,
invented by Belisarius, when the aqueducts were cut by the Goths
during the siege of 53 7-8. In most towns the bakers probably used
donkey mills, and in the countryside the hand quern was still
widely employed, as archaeology testifies.
27
But the greatest incubus on the empire was the primitive means
of transport. Food, clothing and arms had to be carried to the
great armies on the frontier, often for hundreds of miles, and except
in so far as inland waterways could be utilised all this vast load
had to be hauled by slow moving ox wagons.
All this meant that the amount of human labour required to
feed, clothe and supply with his household needs one idle mouth
was very large. The Romans have been criticised for their un-
inventiveness and lack of enterprise. The economic situation
clearly demanded labour saving devices, for there was a manifest
shortage of manpower, whether slave or free. The anonymous
inventor of the oxen driven paddle-boat seems to have been con-
scious of this; for he boasts that it will be effective 'without the
assistance of any large crew', and he also claims that his artillery
could be operated by two men only. There existed moreover a
fund of theoretical scientific knowledge, on steam power for
instance, which was familiar to philosophers and to learned mech-
anici like Anthemius of Tralles.
28
It is however hardly reasonable to single out the Roman empire
for criticism on this score. Until the scientific and industrial revo-
lution which began in the eighteenth century mechanical invention
had been in all civilisations excessively rare, and the Romans do
not compare unfavourably with the Chinese, the Indians, or with
medieval Christendom or Islam. It is only by a rare combination
of economic stimulus, scientific knowledge and technological
skill-and, it may be added, the genius of an inventor-that
practicable inventions are made and exploited. In some ways the
social structure of the empire was unfavourable to invention. The
skilled workers were humble craftsmen without education, who
naturally followed the tradition of their trade. The bias of educa-
tion was overwhelmingly literary, and its products were mostly
uninterested in scientific knowledge: the church condemned scien-
tific thought as worldly vanity. It was only in medicine and in
military and civil engineering that educated practitioners existed.
It is perhaps significant that highly efficient siege engines were
developed and that water power was exploited for sawing marble.
29
SOCIAL WEAKNESSES !049
. The social re!Simentation of empire has been severely criti-
cised as conducive to apathy and mertia and destructive of enter-
is true that t?e imperial gover?ment persistently strove by
legislatiOn and coercive measures to tie certain classes, with their
children, to their occupations. The tied classes fell into two main
groups. There were those whose labour or personal services were
primarily required; these included soldiers, agricultural workers
urban craftsmen, miners, the workers in the state factories and
public post: There were others whose capital assets, that is in
general their land, were earmarked for certain purposes: these
included the navicularii, the bakers and butchers of Rome and the
decurions. In these cases the servitude was sometimes' as with
the navicu!ttria Junctio, legally attached to the land, and fell on who-
ever acquired it; sometimes, as with decurions, was legally hered-
itary. In practice the obligation normally went in all cases from
father to son, since the land generally passed by inheritance.
The distinction between the two groups is not always absolutely
clear cut. Decurions owed munera personalia as well as munera
patrimonalia, and were only in rare cases allowed to perform the
former by deputy. The property of Jabricenses and conchy!ioleguli
since it served government as a guarantee fund, from
which It. recover m of malfeasance or peculation.
Lower civil were reqwred for clerical work, but their
property also tied f'?r the same reason as was that ofjabricenses.
The ongms of these tied classes and the reasons for their creation
are us;rally_ obscure .. In some cases the government was merely
enforcmg lts legal nghts. The weavers and dyers in the state
factories, the in the mints, the postal personnel and some
grades of lower civil servants, such as the Caesariani were by
origiJ: and re;nained_ technically state The naturally
used Its propnetary nghts over them and their children to conserve
its labour force. Soldiers, and civil servants and Jabricenses, who
as milites,. had course ways been obliged to complete
their term. of serv1ce untJ! legally dis_charged and could be punished
for desertion. In extending the obhgation to their sons Diocletian
was making universal and compulsory a very old and widespread
custom of hereditary service.
30
In other cases, such as the navicu!arii and the Roman bakers and
butchers, privileges had in the past been given to capitalists who
wealth in certain occupations useful to the state, and
the _1mpenal g_ove!nment cal?e to regard these privileges as im-
posing an obligatiOn on the1r holders. It was in this spirit that
Constantine justified the conscription of veterans' sons: 'because
of the privileges granted to their fathers we do not allow the sons
IOjO THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
of veterans to be idle'. In the same spirit Constans in 349 enacted:
'all the clergy ought to be free from curial burdens and all the
trouble of civil functions, but their sons, if they are not held liable
to the curia, ought to persevere in the church'. This attempt to
make the clergy a hereditary caste was not however pursued.Sl
Decurions had, during the Principate, been in practice a large!y
hereditary class, since they comprised the richest landowners 1.n
each city, and their estates normally passed by inheritance to the1r
sons. Membership of the curia was already by the early third
century compulsory for any qualified person duly nominated un-
less he could claim a legal exemption. Diocletian and his successors
did no more than tighten up the rules by restricting the exemptions,
and thus gradually cutting off most legal avenues of escape.
32
It is more difficult to see on what principles the government
tied down urban craftsmen, miners and the agricultural population.
It can only be said that in all civilisations miners have usually
been a hereditary group, and peasant proprietors have ch:;ng to
their holdings and passed them on to their sons. There 1s also
evidence that under the Principate the tenants of large states went
on holding their farms from generation to generation. In Egypt
at any rate the Roman government, already in second century, held
that it had the right to order peasants to return to their own place
and cultivate the soil.
33
It would seem that under the Principate society was largely
static: on the whole men of all classes followed their father's
way of life. There was some degree of social mobility but the
government, except in very rare cases, felt no need to check it.
From the reign of Diocletian onwards, on the other hand, the
emperors were constantly endeavouring to hold certain classes,
whose work or whose wealth was essential to the state, to their
normal and hereditary functions. The inference is that on the one
hand there was a manpower shortage, which encouraged mobility
of labour, and on the other hand that the burden on the propertied
groups increased and that they sought to evade it.
What little evidence there is suggests that these conditions ex-
isted. The wars and plagues of the third century must have reduced
the population and at the same time there was the increased demand
for men by the army. The resulting shortage of agricultural man-
power evidently tempted tenants to move in hopes of better con-
ditions elsewhere, and attracted miners and other industrial workers
to the land. In the second place the great inflation must have
eaten away the profit margin of such classes as the navicularii who
were paid in money. The increasing burden of levies in kind,
which the collapse of the currency and the growth of the army
SOCIAL WEAKNESSES IOji
entailed, must have made the life of the curial class which collected
them much more onerous. At the same time the expansion of the
administrative machine offered tempting avenues of escape to men
of this class.
The government reacted, as most governments do in times of
crisis, to the simplest expedient-the use of its powers of coercion
to compel the existing workers and property owners to go on per-
forming their essential functions. That the system was from the
beginning made hereditary was inevitable. It was the simplest and
most obvious course, and any alternative would have been admin-
istratively highly complicated. It conformed to the traditional
social pattern; the emperors no doubt felt that they were merely
preventing deviations from the natural rule. In some cases, that of
the decurions, for instance, and of the peasantry, it was based on
the ancient principle of origo, which was fundamental in Roman
law. Once the system was established it tended to be perpetuated,
and in some cases extended and in many made more rigid, from
the mere force of inertia. The government came to regard it as in
itself desirable, and to continue to enforce it when it was no longer
necessary; it filled in gaps and stopped up loopholes for the sake
of tidiness, and regarded the man who did not fit into the system,
the vagus, as an undesirable anomaly. But in many spheres the
stringency which had dictated the system remained, and any relax-
ation of it produced alarming results. The laws of V alentinian I
and Theodosius I continuing to tie the coloni of Illyricum and
Thrace after the abolition of the capitatio, and the strong reaction
against Justinian's law freeing the sons of coloni married to free
women, show that agricultural manpower was still very short in
the late fourth and even in the sixth century.
The theoretical extent and the actual effectiveness of the restric-
tive legislation have often been exaggerated. The conscription of
the sons of soldiers and veterans seems to have been dropped at
the end of the fourth century. Constantine ruled that all sons of
civil servants should go into their fathers' offices, but the rule was
never applied except to the lowest grade, the cohortales. Urban
craftsmen were not tied to their trades in the West until the end
of the fourth century, and were never tied in the East. Diocletian
tied all the rural population to the land, but the rule very soon
ceased to be applied to peasant proprietors, and came to be limited
to adscripticii or originales, the descendants of tenants originally
registered on an estate; it was only at the end of the fifth century
that free tenants became tied by thirty years' prescription. There
were, moreover, some legal loopholes. Adscripticii could, until the
early fifth century, legally join the army, and could generally be
MM
I0j2 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
ordained, at any rate with their Decurio_ns were
not debarred from certain professwns-medicme, teaching and
the law-and could generally take orders provided that they
surrendered most of their property: they were also rarely excluded
from the higher branches of the government service.
In practice the enforcement of the laws was very lax and un-
systematic. Soldiers and Jabricenses were branded, but was no
system of identity papers whereby those who left their lawful
occupations could be traced, and very little attempt made to
verify systematically the antecedents of those .who JOined any
service. The enforcement of the law was left to informers, whose
object was usually to extort blackmail rather than to reclaim delin-
quents, or to interested parties: it ':'as the of landlords to
trace and reclaim their vagrant co!ont and of Cities to recall errant
decurions to the curia. All that the government did was to issue
laws and order occasional purges and roundups. At long intervals
the swollen staff of a palatine ministry would be checked, and
cttriales and cohortales expelled (unless they had been for a long
time in the service): from time to time there would be a call-up
of sons of veterans, and they would be drafted into the army
(unless they were already too old for active service)."'
The laws themselves, by their constant reiteration of the same
prohibitions .and freq':'ent condonati'?n of past offences, show
how impossible lt was without any pohce to enforce .the rules.
They also, by their constant denunciation of corrupt show
how easy it was to bribe the officials to turn a blind eye. We
know too from casual references of a surprisingly large number of
cases where the rules were broken with impunity. . . . .
In any stable society, however free, the rate of soc1al J?obility.ls
low. The average man is content to remain in the station of life
in which he was born, and very often to follow
as his father. On the other hand even in the most ng1d soc1et1es
some able and ambitious men succeed in breaking through the
legal or social barriers. There was a. marked tendency in. the
later Roman empire for the free professiOns to become hereditary
by the desire of their. members. know of many
clerical fam1hes which produced b1shops generation after genera-
tion and of military families which produced a succession of
We know of doctors who were sons of doctors and
of professors who were sons. of professors. Lawyers and higher
civil servants sought and obtamed from the government
for their sons, who wished to go to the bar or to the
where their fathers had spent their lives. But while the forces which
made for social stability were so strong, we know of far more men
l
i
i
j
>
!
>
!
1
i

'
I
ADMINISTRATIVE ABUSES
who rose from humble origins to the highest positions in the
state under the later empire than under the Principate. The
laws may have been irksome to some ambitious men who were
unlucky or lacked the drive to elude them, but they were. evidently
no serious obstacle to men of ability and determination."
Other historians have attributed the decline of the empire to the
gradual elimination of the 'bourgeoisie' or 'middle class', by which
term they mean the curial order. It is not clear why the destruction
of this class, if and in so far as it was destroyed, should have ad-
versely affected the economic life of the empire. The curiales were
not, and never had been, creators of wealth. They were renders,
landlords who were often absentees and did not on the whole, so
far as we know, take any active interest in their estates. They
were, many of them, men of culture and education, and in so far as
they gave their unpaid services to the government and contributed
to its cost, fulfilled a useful social role: but they did not increase
the wealth of the empire. .
It is in fact very questionable whether this class was ill any real
sense eliminated. The curial order was certainly diminished very
greatly in numbers and wealth over the centuries, bm thi.s was
very largely because curiales became senators, honoratz, c1vil ser-
vants, lawyers and clergy. Some families certainly were
by the financial strain, and had to sell their lands, usually to the1r
richer neighbours, and there was thus some tendency for the great
landiords to increase their estates at the expense of the lesser. But
there always remained a substantial middie class, who mostly
owned land. The only difference was that they bore different
official titles, and that many of them were in the professions and
supplemented their unearned income, with salaries and fees.
36
The imperial government was very conscious of the ab':ses of
the administrative machine. The Codes are full of laws which en-
deavour to combat the venality and extortion of provincial gover-
nors and officials and to curb the inordinate growth of the bureau-
cracy. This very fact perhaps makes us exaggerate the of
the evil, but it cannot be doubted that there was a marked detenor-
ation from the days of the Principate.
Even in its best days the imperial civil service was not impec-
cable; the few records that we possess reveal that governors
were dishonest and brutal, and inscriptions and papyn show that
officials were often guilty of minor extortion the
cials. Nevertheless respectable standards were m general mam-
MM*
1054
tained. The bulk of the routine work of the administration,
including the collection of the taxes, was delegated to the cities,
and this made it possible to keep the imperial service small and
select. A conscientious emperor could pick his men and keep his
eye on their conduct, and, since promotion usually depended on a
good record, governors and procurators, if they wished for a
successful career, had to avoid scandals. They were moreover
very liberally paid, and thus had less temptation to make money
by illicit means. A tradition was thus built up.37
This happy state of affairs was largely dependent on the fact
that the imperial civil service was subjected to very little strain.
The army was small and largely recruited by voluntary enlistment;
the taxes were moderate and normally paid without effort; and the
city councils did most of the work without complaint. Much
heavier strains were imposed on the administration in the third
century. The local gentry, who had regarded it as an honour, or at
least a social obligation, to serve on the city councils, now tried to
evade service, and the imperial government had to compel them to
perform their administrative functions. The taxes, supplemented
by frequent levies in kind, became more difficult to exact from a
population diminished by plague and impoverished by constant
wars. Under these strains the traditional code of the second
century seems to have broken down. What was required in gover-
nors and procurators was ruthless efficiency rather than scrupulous
probity. At the same time the inflation of the currency drastically
reduced the real value of their salaries. They had increased oppor-
tunities for corruption and extortion, and strong temptation to
exploit them.
Diocletian's great expansion of the army redoubled the pressure
on the administration. Its numbers had to be increased if it was to
levy the men and the supplies required. The rapid expansion of
the service must have involved some dilution of quality, and,
while under the tetrarchy four emperors could select their men and
maintain some control over them, when the whole empire was
ruled by two emperors or even one, it was no longer easy for the
central government to exercise much discrimination in appoint-
ments or to keep a close check on the conduct of the men appointed.
Salaries, moreover, remained very low as compared with those
of the Principate. It is clear from Constantine's legislation that he
was shocked by the corruption and extortion which prevailed
among provincial governors, but he was evidently unable to
restore respectable standards of probity.
It would appear that a governorship was, except by a few excep-
tionally scrupulous men, regarded as a financial prize. The best
I
I
- . . ........
ADMINISTRATIVE ABUSES !055
1
evidence for this is the system of suffragia, which first comes to our
notice under Constantine and, despite the efforts of successive
reforming emperors, proved an ever-spreading and ineradicable
evil. It was taken over by the crown under Zeno, who sold posts
officially for the benefit of the treasury, and had by his time ex-
tended to the second grade of the administrative service, the
spectabiles iudices. Justinian at a considerable financial sacrifice
abolished imperial suffragia, but they soon crept back and were
prevalent under Maurice.as
Not all the men who paid large sums for an appointment were
primarily interested in the financial aspect . of the deal. Many
wished to raise their social status, and in particular to escape from
the curia. But a large number must have wanted to make money,
and even those who did not probably expected to recover their
costs. Suffragia, moreover, set up a vicious spiral. As the price of
office rose by competitive bidding, governors their
illicit profits, and, as the average profit of a governorship went up,
prices rose. By the sixth century an honest man could not serve
except at a heavy financial loss.
Many forms of extortion no doubt became traditional per-
quisites which excited no comment, but there is ample evidence
that the corruption of justice in the provincial courts did cause grave
discontent, and that fiscal extortion and other forms of blackmail
went beyond the bounds accepted by contemporary opinion.
Justinian seriously believed that the capacity of the provincials
to pay their taxes was gravely impaired by the illicit exactions of
governors.
39
.
The military administration suffered less from
Commissions, particularly in the limitanei, were obta1.tl;ed. by
suffragium, but were for the most part awarded by mer:t or seruonty,
and the purchase of posts never became systematic. Duces and
tribunes supplemented their pay by. variou_s forms . of
peculation. Some grossly explmted their pos1t1on by mterceptmg
the arms remounts uniforms, rations and donatives of their
troops, these exceptions. Most made certai?-
which eventually became customary, from the rations of the!!
men, and kept their units under strength, appropriating the pay
and allowances of men who were dead or who had been granted
indefinite leave. These abuses of course reduced the effective
strength of the army, but they came to be a?-d stan-
dardised. The eventual result was that officers salanes, which were
in the fourth century very low, came by the fifth century to be
supplemented by certain recognised perquis!tes.
40
.
In the civil service proper the officials mcreased theu meagre
pay by tips or fees (sportulae). Litigants had to pay fees to the
officials of the court at every stage of the judicial procedure,
applicants for posts or grants or privileges had to tip the clerk who
handled their petitions, taxpayers had to pay various forms of
commission to the financial officials concerned in the collection
of the revenue. Constantine endeavoured to abolish these sportu!ae,
but under his successors they were condoned and regulated. In so
far as they were controlled and standardised they were not a
serious abuse: it was not unreasonable that litigants should pay
what amounted to court fees and petitioners the equivalent of
stamp tax, while the fiscal sportulae could be justified as a surcharge
to cover the costs of collection. The trouble was that, when fees
were standardised, additional tips soon came to be expected, and
sportulae thus tended always to increase, and that the distinction
between fees and bribes tended to be blurred: for more substantial
payments officials were willing to put through illegal transactions.41
Diocletian greatly increased the number of ojficia by his multi-
plication of the provinces and creation of the dioceses. He must
also have enlarged the praetorian prefectures to enable them to
cope with the additional work which he imposed upon them,
especially the elaborate annual calculation of the indiction. The
provincial and diocesan staffs did not increase substantially there-
after, but the central ministries continued to grow. This was
partly the result of growing centralisation. The emperors, justi-
fiably mistrusting the honesry and efficiency of their administrative
officers in the dioceses and provinces, allowed them less and less
initiative and imposed upon them ever stricter control and audit;
and the central ministries, which profited from this policy in greatly
increased fees, constantly encroached on the functions of the diocesan
and provincial staffs. The praetorian prefectures and the palatine
offices had necessarily to be enlarged to cope with the increased
volume of work which was concentrated upon them. But this
was not the only cause for the inflation of the central ministries.
The emperors lavishly rewarded pa!atini and praefectiani for their
services by grants of privileges and honours, and the fees which
could be earned in the central offices grew steadily more substantial.
The result was a constant pressure, which proved irresistible, of
applicants for places: by the middle of the fifth century posts in the
most highly favoured ministries had come to command a price.
The emperors tried hard to check the inflation of numbers by laying
down maximum establishments, but supernumerary clerks always
accumulated.
42
Excessive centralisation involved an immense volume of cleriCal
labour and slowed up the processes of government. Nor did it
l
ADMINISTRATIVE ABUSES I057
achieve its object of checking corruption. The emperors and their
ministers were so snowed under with papers that they signed
them without reading them, and the clerks of the central ministries
could thus put through for those prepared to pay for them illegal
grants oflands, privileges, titles and immunities. The high courts of
justice were so clogged with appeals, the delays so interminable
and the fees so high, that the victims of injustice in the lower
courts were denied redress unless they had very long purses.
The fees of the central financial officials added substantially to the
burden of taxation in the Western parts, as much, it would seem,
as 2 5 per cent. in the last days of the empire.43
The number of officials became unnecessarily inflated, but was
not vast in relation to the size of the empire. There were less than
u,ooo cohorta!es in all the provincial ojficia and approximately half
that number in the diocesan ojficia. The military offices were all
very modest; magistri mi!itutn had 300 officials each, duces 40.
There were probably under 5 ,ooo military officials all told. The
praetorian and urban prefectures may have employed about
5 ,ooo clerks. Of the palatine ministries the largest recorded was the
agentes in re bus with I ,248 members; the !argitiones had 5 46 or 446
clerks, the res privata 300, the sacra scrinia I 30, and there were only
3 3 silentiaries and 30 active notaries. The total for each emperor
would thus have been about 2, 5 oo, that is 5 ,ooo for both parts of the
empire. These figures refer to established posts only and take no
account of supernumeraries. The grand total of regular officials
was thus not much in excess of 3o,ooo, not an extravagant number
for an empire which stretched from Hadrian's Wall to beyond the
Euphrates. The direct expense imposed on the state was small,
since supernumeraries were not paid and the pay of established
officials was modest, not to say meagre.
44
The great officers of state had considerable opportunities for
making money on the side. Being in close contact with emperors
they could successfully press for grants of land and money, and
could exact suffragia from aspirants to lesser offices. Most no doubt
exploited such opportunities, and many probably took bribes in
other circumstances also. Sulpicius Severus accuses the magister
ojficiorum Macedonius of accepting money from Priscillian, and
Cyril gave large sums to the master of the offices and the quaestor
of the day-but did not attempt to corrupt the praetorian prefect.
Ministers are not in general mentioned in the sanctions of laws,
which assume that their ojficia are guilry of breaches of the law.
This is probably a polite fiction. In a law prohibiting petitiones,
addressed to the praetorian prefect, Theodosius II threatens the
quaestor and comes rei privatae with his condign wrath If they never-
promote them, and Leo in a law against monopolies again
threatens the quaestor and all the palatine ministers if they support
petitions for them. The high officers of state do not seem, however,
on the whole to have been as systematically corrupt as the lower
grades of the administration. Some, like Rufinus and John of
Cappadocia, made enormous fortunes by very dubious practices,
but they were exceptions whose excesses excited remark.45
The most depressing feature of the later empire is the apparent
.absence of public spirit. The motive forces seem to be, on the one
-
desire to rise ..
under had been inspired by pride in
their cities and a laudable ambition to win the approbation of their
fellow citizens. In the later empire the government had to compel
them not to shirk their dutiesr In the second century there seems
to have been a certain traditidn of public service among senators
and members of the equestrian order. Under the later empire the
majority appear to have been interested only in the rank and wealth
which offices bestowed upon their holders. The spirit of public
service was not, it is true, entirely lacking. Many of the emperors
were devoted public servants, who worked hard both to increase the
efficiency of the administration and to protect their subjects from
oppression. Many, too, of their chief ministers had the interests
of the empire at heart. Some, like Anthemius, who virtually
governed the Eastern parts in the early fifth century, received high
praise from contemporaries for their wise and just rule. Others,
who, like John the Cappadocian, were execrated for their rapacity
and brutality, and certainly did not neglect their opportuoities for
self-enrichment, were nevertheless efficient public servants, who
did much to improve the finances of the empire and to eliminate
waste and peculation. Others, again, like Symmachus, though
lacking energy and initiative, performed their functions with
honesty and diligence. But even among the great ministers of the
empire there were many who used their offices only to enrich them-
selves and distribute patronage to their relations and friends, and
at the lower levels of the administration the general standard was,
as the government often admitted, deplorably low. The only way
to secure honest provincial governors, Marcian publicly declared,
was to appoint men who did not wish to serve. This is a pessimistic,
not to say cynical, doctrine. No one, it implies, ever applied for
a post save for self-interested motives; the context implies the
DECLINE OF MORALE ;!059
desire to make money. The emperor does not envisage the p'bd
bility that anyone might wish to earn an honest livelihood by
conscientious work, much less have the disinterested desire to
serve the state to the best of his ability.
46
Even more striking evidence of the lack of public spirit is the
inertia of the civil population, high and low, in the face of the
barbarian invasions.
The upper classes were proud of being Romans and valued
Roman civilisation. They rejoiced in the victories of the empire
over the barbarians and were shocked and dismayed by its defeats.
They certainly had no desire to fall under barbarian rule. We
know of two men only who can be called traitors. Arvandus,
praetorian prefect of the Gauls from 464 to 468, and Seronatus,
probably vicar of the Seven Provinces shortly after, no doubt
despairing of the empire, collaborated with the Visigoths.
were indicted by their fellow countrymen, Arvandus by the diO-
cesan assembly of Gaul, Seronatus by the Civitas Arvernorum, and
were brought to trial at Rome and condemned.
47
The loyalty of the upper classes was, however, of a very passive
character. A handful only raised resistance movements. The only
large scale concerted movement was of the British and
Armorican cities in 408. In 397 Valentmus, a notable of Selge,
raised a force of slaves and peasants which successfully withstood
Tribigild's Goths. A few years later Synesius of Cyrene organised
and armed a band of peasants against the Austuriani. In 5 )2
Pudentius raised his province of Tripolitania against the Vandals
and with the aid of a small body of imperial troops ejected them.
In 5 46 Tullianus, a magnate of Lucania and Bruttium, organised
a large force of rustics to assist the imperial armies against Totila.
48
More usually those who could fled to safer places. According to
Orosius, when the barbarians overran Spain in 409, the majority of
the Romans-he is clearly thinking of the upper classes-acted on
the text, 'when they persecute you in one city flee another', often
bribing barbarians to escort them and car_ry the1r Pos-
sidius gives us a vivid and contemporary p1cture of the flight from
the Vandals when they invaded Mauretania and Numidia in 437
When the Vandals occupied Africa Proconsularis and Byzacena
in 442, there was again a large emigration of upper-class Romans.
Next year Valentinian III declared a moratorium on debts owed by
African who appear to have _been of substance,
and licensed Mncan lawyers to plead m the Itahan courts. Even
in Syria bishop Theodoret was embar.rassed at the demands for
hospitality made by once wealthy . .A:fncan refugees. Many laJ?-d-
owners and honorati fled to Num1dia and the two Mauretaman
ro6o THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
provinces, and in 4 5 r were allotted r 3 ,ooo centuriae of deserted
land in the former, and all imperial lands in the latter, together
with the estates belonging to the bakers' guilds of Rome.49
The in Spain and Africa was somewhat exceptional, for
these provrnces had never seen a barbarian for generations. We
hear of no similar exodus from Gaul or Illyricum, and even in
Spain and Africa many of the upper classes stayed behind, whether
they could not get away or did not wish to do so we do not know.
Under the barbarian kings they grumbled but made the best of
things: soon many were collaborating with the barbarian kings,
acting as their ministers and governors. Orosius goes a little
further. After the first orgy of pillage the barbarians, he says,
treated the provincials kindly, 'so that there are now some Romans
to be found among them who prefer poverty and freedom among
the barbarians to the burden of tribute among the Romans'.
Even this guarded statement is suspect, for Orosius is most
anxious to prove that even the horrors of the invasion of Spain,
then fresh in men's minds, were not so bad as the disasters of the
pagan empire. An even more biassed and unreliable witness
Salvian, goes further. In Gaul, he asserts, governmental
sion of the provincials was so outrageous that 'many of them,
of goo.d and libera.l education,, flee to the enemy, to
avord .death mfl1cted by pubhc persecutiOn, seeking Roman
humaruty among the barbarians because they cannot endure
barbarian inhumanity among the Romans'. Some victim of ex-
tortion may have fled in desperation, but there is no evidence to
support Salvian's improbable assertion. so
l.ower d?wn the social s.cale townsmen occasionally took
the .In1t1at1ve agarnst the barbanans. In 376 the magistrates of
Adnanople armed the townspeople and the workers in the local
arms factory and made an attack on the Goths. In 443 the citizens
of Asemus sallied. out against a ]?arty of and captured them
at;d re.covered t?elr. booty and Insp1re.d by their bishop,
S1domus Apollinans, the Arverm defended the1r c1ty against the
Visigoths for five years from 4 71-5. In many cities no doubt the
townspeople manned the walls, or assisted the garrison in the
task, but in Mesopotamia and Syria quite a number did not risk
resistance to Chosroes but bought immunity from captivity and
pillage with large money payments.sr
But ::lllce again, if townsmen .were n_ot very active in resisting the
barbanans, we know of no c1ty which threw open its gates to
welcome them. When Justinian's armies arrived in Africa and
Sicily and Italy, on the other hand, with the solitary exception of
Naples, where there was a strong Gothic garrison and a party in
DECLINE OF MORALE ro6r
the town preferred to play for safety, the towns readily opened
their gates to the imperial forces, greeted them with enthusiasm,
and even asked to be occupied. We know of only one townsman
who preferred life among the barbarians, the Greek merchant
from Virninacium whom Priscus met at Attila's court, who justified
his strange choice by a denunciation of Roman taxation and
injustice. 52
Salvian declares that the peasants were so oppressed under
Roman rule and so well treated in the Visigothic kingdom, that
'the one wish of all the Romans there is that they may never be
obliged to pass under Roman jurisdiction; the one unanimous
prayer of the Roman common people there is that they may be
allowed to live the life they lead with the barbarians'. The facts
do not bear him out. On the very few occasions that they were
given a lead by their landlords or other local magnates the peasan-
try fought against the barbarians. But under similar leadership
they fought in civil wars which can have meant little or nothing
to them: Didymus and Verinianus, two young Spanish senators,
who were related to Honorius, raised an army of slaves from their
estates to fight the usurper Constantine. Peasants would also,
under similar stimulus, fight for the barbarians. When Tullianus
raised his force of rustics to fight for the empire, Totila mobilised a
peasant army to fight for the Ostrogoths, and the two bodies of
Italian peasants slaughtered each other in a bloody battle. Later
the senators under Totila's control, on his instructions, sent
agents to order their tenants in Tullianus's force to go back to their
farms, and they obediently and no doubt gladly did so. On our
evidence the peasantry were in general apathetic and docile:
of any spontaneous action on either side there is scarcely any trace.
Synesius praises the courage and initiative of a village in Cyrenaica,
which, led by a deacon, beat off the Austuriani. On the other
hand many miners in Thrace, Ammianus tells us, joined the Goths
in 3 76, because 'they could not endure the burden of the taxes;
it is perhaps relevant that there had recently been a roundup of
miners who had taken up farming. Slaves are twice recorded to
have joined the invading hordes. Many rallied to the Goths
before the battle of Adrianople and again when Alaric was at the
gates of Rome. But these slaves were certainly in the first case
and probably in the second recently enslaved barbarians, who
naturally sought refuge with their fellow tribesmen. sa
J
The passive inertia displayed by the civil population, high and
low alike, was no new phenomenon: we hear of no resistance
movements under the Principate. It was probably in large part
due to the fact that for generations the population had been accus-
ro62 THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE
tamed to being protected by a professional army. The civil popu-
lation was in fact, for reasons of internal security, forbidden to
bear arms. More important than this legal prohibition was the
attitude of mind which it reflected. Citizens were not expected to
fight, and for tbe most part they never envisaged the idea of
fighting.
The Roman empire seems never to have evoked any active
patriotism from tbe vast majority of its citizens. Most of them no
doubt were indifferent but even those who admired the empire
felt no call to devote themselves to its service. Their attitude was
well expressed by Aelius Aristides' great panegyric on Rome, and
symbolised by the official cult of Rome and Augustus. Rome was
to them a mighty power which excited their ad-
miration and gratitude but the empire was too immense to evoke
the kind of loyalty whic they felt to their own citieSJThey revered
the emperor as a saviour and benefactor, who '*h his legions
defended their cities against the barbarians, and by his wisdom,
humanity and justice promoted their peace and prosperity, but
they did not regard him as a leader whom they must serve. Rome
was eternal, and tbe emperor was a god, who needed no assistance
from his worshippers.
Under the later empire the same attitude persisted. The regular
army was expected to defend the empire, and it was only in a most
desperate emergency, when Radagaisus and his hordes had broken
into Italy, that the government appealed to the provincials to join
up as temporary volunteers 'for love of peace and country'. It
was still in theory illegal for civilians to own or bear arms. Only
when Gaiseric was threatening to invade Italy was this rule re-
laxed and the provincials urged to arm themselves in order to
resist Vandal landings. Justinian tightened up the ban on arms
by making their manufacture a strict imperial monopoly; but he
did provide the cities with armouries, controlled by the patres
civitatum. Nor did the fundamental attitude of the provindals to
the empire change. The emperor was no longer a god, but he was
the vicegerent of God, entrusted by him with the task of govern-
ing and defending the empire. His subjects were taught to render
unto Caesar tbe things that are Caesar's, that is, to pay their taxes
and obey the authorities; but they were not exhorted to devote
themselves to the empire's service. 54
Christianity has been accused ofp. the one hand of sapping the
empire's morale by its otherworl<J# attitude, and on the other hand
credited with giving the empire new spiritual energy and reforming
it by its moral teaching. Neither allegation seems to have much
substance. There is little to show that pagan worship promoted a
DECLINE OF MORALE
patriotic spirit; the gods were, it is true, regarded as the patrons
and protectors of the Roman state, so long as they were not
?Y the breach of certain moral rules and were duly placated
wrth sacrrfices, but they do not seem to have inspired patriotic de-
votion. Constantine and his successors and tbeir Christian subjects
carried over the same attitude to the one God whom they wor-
shipped. God in their eyes was the mighty power who would give
victory and prosperity to the empire, provided that he was properly
appeased by his worshippers. His demands were, it is true, more
exacting than those of the old gods, since he required not only
ritual acts, but correct belief about his own nature, and the standard
of morality which he expected from his devotees was markedly
higher. But for the vast majority of ordinary men Christianity
caused no fundamental change of attitude.
To the ordinary man likewise the moral teaching and the other-
worldly doctrine of Christianity seems to have made little practical
difference. In some respects moral standards declined, and most
people continued to devote their energies to the goods of this
world. The average Christian does not seem to have worried
greatly about tbe fate of his soul until he feared that death was
near, and then hoped to win access to heaven by the rituals of
baptism or penance. In the meanwhile he pursued his worldly
ends with no more, and sometimes less, regard for moral principles
than his pagan forebears.
There was, of course, a minority who took the Christian message
seriously to heatt, and regarding the things of the world as of no
account, devoted themselves to achieving eternal life in tbe world
to come. Many thousands withdrew into the desert or into monas-
teries and spent the rest of their lives striving by austerities and
prayer to gain salvation; many were drawn, often against their
will, into the service of the Church as priests and bishops.
Quantitatively the loss to the state was probably not significant.
Numerous as the clergy, monks and hermits were, their withdrawal
cannot have seriously accentuated the manpower shortage from
which the empire suffered, nor can the fact tbat the majority of
them were celibate have contributed much to the shrinkage of the
population. Qualitatively the loss was more serious. It was men
of high moral character who were most drawn to the spiritual
life, and were tbus lost to the service of the state.[fn the pagan
empire such men had regarded the public service as one of the
principal duties of the good man and citizen. Under the new
dispensation they were taught that a public career was, if not
so fraught with spiritual danger that it should be
service of the state tended to be left to ambitious careerrsts, and
Christianity thus paradoxically increased the corruption of the
government. s!U
It may be asked whether the Eastern parts suffered less from any
of the weaknesses discussed above than did the West. In some
respects the East was at a disadvantage. Christianity prevailed
earlier in the Eastern parts and obtained a more thorough hold.
Monks and were more numerous and more richly endowed,
and thus a heavter burden on the economy. Theological controv-
ersy was more widespread and more embittered, and the repression
of demanded a greater use of force and provoked more
hostility. In so far as the otherworldly attitude which Christianity
inculcated weakened public morale, the East should have been
more gravely affected. In most matters no significant distinction
can be traced. The most serious losses in the area of cultivation are
recorded in Mrica, but agri deserti were a problem common to
both halves of the empire. The rules tying coloni to the soil and
curiales to their cities were even more rigid in the East than in
the West. The East was, it is true, more politically stable and
dissipat:d less of its strength in ciyil wars, but as against this it
was obliged on a number of occasions to waste its resources on
suppressing Western usurpers.
In two .ways, however, the East seems to have been stronger
and healthier than the West. In the first place the Eastern provinces
were probably initially richer and more populous than the Western.
It is very difficult to substantiate this statement, but it must be
remembered that Macedonia at;d. <?reece, Asia Minor, Syria and
Egypt had been. settled and la?-ds for many centuries
when they w:re. mcorporated m the emp1re, while many parts of
the West, Bntam, northern Gaul, north-western Spain and the
Danubian provinces, had been barbarous and undeveldped even
after their annexation. The resources of the Eastern lands had
long been fully exploited and their population had swelled. In
the north-western provinces much of the potentially best land was
probably and ':'aste, or swamp. It is significant
that Aqmtarua rs more highly prarsed for its agricultural wealth
by Salvran than northern Gaul, and that supplies had to be carted
all the way from Aquitania to Chillons and even to Paris to feed
Consta_n!ius II's Julian's armies. It is even more significant
that Sicily, Sardirua and above all Africa were still under the
later empire .as the. granaries . of the Western empire.
For these countnes, w1th therr mountamous terrain and scanty
EAST AND WEST
and irregular rainfall, can never have been highly productive,
however intensively they were cultivated, and their yield would
have been far exceeded by that of Britain, Gaul and the Danubian
lands, had the resources of these regions been fully exploited.
From the meagre figures available it would appear that the Mrican
diocese, the richest in the Western parts, produced only a third
or a quarter of the revenue that Egypt, its richest diocese, yielded
to the Eastern government. 56
This picture is rather difficult to believe when one looks at the
present state of affairs, when north-western Europe is intensively
cultivated and densely populated, and north Mrica (with the ex-
ception of Egypt, whose natural wealth has in all ages remained
indestructible), Syria, Anatolia and the Balkans are derelict after
long centuries of neglect and misgovernment. Progressive de-
nudation has by now reduced their water supplies and washed
away much of their good soil, but even now they could produce
far more than they do, and the archaeological remains show that
they were far more extensively cultivated in Roman times.
A rough index to the geographical distribution of wealth under
the Roman empire is provided by the ruins of ancient monuments;
for under the Principate all cities expended as much as they could
afford on public buildings. The survival of ancient buildings is of
course largely a matter of chance, and their chances are far better
in areas which have subsequently become derelict than in those
which have remained in continuous occupation and prospered.
Whole cities survive in the deserts of Mrica and Syria and in the
more desolate parts of Asia Minor, but virtually nothing at con-
tinuously occupied sites like Antioch or Alexandria. Nevertheless
the distribution of ruins is suggestive. In all northern western
Europe-Britain, northern Gaul, north-western Spain and the
Danubian lands-no monumental buildings survive except at the
imperial capital of Trier, and the buildings which excavation has
revealed are mosdy on a modest scale. By contrast Narbonensis,
eastern and southern Spain, Italy, north Mrica, Syria and Pales-
tine, Asia Minor and the southern Balkans can boast of many,
and the largest and most magnificent are in the Eastern parts. In
these areas, furthermore, where the Roman buildings have dis-
appeared, Roman columns, capitals and other architectural mem-
bers have been freely reused in the medieval mosques and churches.
It is hard to find a Roman column in north-western Europe, and
it is likely the medieval builders found few.5
7
The Eastern Empire was thus probably from the start richer
than the Western, the greater part of which was still underdevel-
oped. The distribution of wealth was also probably more even in
the East. This again is diificult to substantiate, but the few facts
and figures that we possess strongly suggest that the senators of
Rome were far wealthier than those of Constantinople and owned
far more extensive estates. There were probably more medium
lat;downers in the East, and fairly certainly more peasant pro-
pnetors, notably in Egypt, eastern Asia Minor, Thrace and Illyri-
cum. The explanation of this appears to be historical. The Roman
arist?cracy in the West had begun to accumulate wealth far earlier,
and m some Western lands, such as Gaul, there had already existed
a landov:ning. arist?cracy before the Roman conquest. In the
East an rmpenal anstocracy only began to accumulate wealth in
the fourth century, and in some provinces, notably Egypt, the
system of land tenure had protected the peasant proprietor.ss
The greater number of small freeholders, since taxes came to less
than rent, meant that a higher proportion of the yield of agriculture
remained in the hands of the cultivators in the East than in the West.
By and .large the peasantry were better fed and probably reared
~ o r children .. It also meant that the state secured a higher propor-
tion of the agncultural surplus, for peasant proprietors and small
landowners paid full rate of tax, while the great senatorial landlords,
apart. from the legal exemptions which they enjoyed, could evade
taxatron.
The existence of an ancient wealthy aristocracy in the West also
had important political effects. The Roman aristocracy from the
reign of Constantine became ever more influential, and by the fifth
century almost monopolised the higher administrative posts.
These great noblemen were naturally tender to the interests of
their own class, and were on the whole inefficient administrators.
In the East, on the other hand, hereditary nobles did not dominate
the administration, and the highest posts were often filled by men
who had risen by ability, and being dependent on the emperor's
favour, gave priority to the interests of the government. The
result was that the fiscal privileges of the great owners were curbed,
and also that there was less wastage in tbe administration: it is
highly significant that the perquisites of the officials who collected
the taxes were fifty or sixty times greater in the \'V' est than in the
East. 59
The East then probably possessed greater economic resources,
and could thus support with less strain a larger number of idle
mouths. A smaller part of its resources went it would seem to
. . . . ' ,
marntatn rts arrstocracy, and more was thus available for the army
and ~ t h r essential services. It also was probably more populous,
and smce the economrc pressure on the peasantry was perhaps less
severe, may have suffered less from population decline. If there is
EAST AND WEST
any substance in these arguments, the Eastern government should
have been able to raise a larger revenue without overstraining its
resources, and to levy more troops without depleting its labour
force.
It is impossible to check this hypothesis for the crucial period,
the fourth century, in which both halves of the empire were terri-
torially intact. In the fifth and sixth centuries the Eastern govern-
ment commanded a larger and more buoyant revenue than the
Western. It could spend very large sums on lavish blackmail
to the barbarians and on ambitious military operations without
running into serious financial difficulties. Leo's expedition against
the Vandals, followed by Zeno's reckless expenditure, did indeed
temporarily exhaust the treasury, but Anastasius was quickly able
to restore the empire's finances, and it was not until the reign of
Maurice that the strain of the protracted Persian and A var wars
caused a serious financial crisis. It was also able to raise large
armies from its own subjects and did not make excessive use of
barbarian troops.
The Western government on the other hand was almost bank-
rupt by the end of V alentinian HI's reign and had virtually aban-
doned conscription, relying almost entirely on barbarian federates.
The collapse of the \'('est was however by no means entirely attri-
butable to its internal weaknesses, for the government had by now
lost to the barbarians many of the provinces on which it had relied
for revenue and recruits, and those which it still controlled had
suffered so severely from the ravages of the barbarians that they
had to be allowed remission of taxation.
Of the manifold weaknesses of the later Roman empire some,
the increasing maldistribution of wealth, the corruption and ex-
tortion of the administration, the lack of public spirit and the
general apathy of the population, were to a large extent due to
internal causes. But some of the more serious of these weaknesses
were the result, direct or indirect, of barbarian pressure. Above all
the need to maintain a vastly increased army had far-reaching
effects. It necessitated a rate of taxation so heavy as to cause a
progressive decline in agriculture and indirectly a shrinkage of
population. The effort to collect this heavy taxation required a
great expansion of the civil service, and this expansion in turn
imposed an additional burden on the economy and made admin-
istrative corruption and extortion more difficult to control. The
oppressive weight of the taxation contributed to the general apathy.
The Western empire was poorer and less populous, and its social
and economic structure more unhealthy. It was thus less able to
withstand the tremendous strains imposed by its defensive effort,
and the internal weaknesses which it developed undoubtedly con-
tributed to its final collapse in the fifth century. But the major
cause of its fall was that it was more exposed to barbarian onslaughts
which in persistence and sheer weight of numbers far exceeded
anything which the empire had previously had to face. The Eastern
empire, owing to its greater wealth and population and sounder
economy, was better able to carry the burden of defence, but its
resources were overstrained and it developed the same weaknesses
as the West, if perhaps in a less acute form. Despite these weak-
nesses it managed in the sixth century not only to hold its own
against the Persians in the East but to reconquer parts of the West,
and even when, in the seventh century, it was overrun by the on-
slaughts of the Persians and the Arabs and the Slavs, it succeeded
despite heavy territorial losses in rallying and holding its own. The
internal weaknesses of the empire cannot have been a major factor
in its decline.

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his own estates, bonds for debt lost their force, no m

f!tters of those who boasted that they ":'ere the

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